MADRID – Blackstone (NYSE: BX), the world’s largest alternative asset manager, plans to invest 7.5 billion euros ($8.2 billion) to develop data centers in Spain’s Aragon, boosting the region’s growing status as a major cloud computing hub in Europe.
The U.S. private equity fund will follow tech giants such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in choosing the regional capital Zaragoza in northeastern Spain, where so far 19 data center projects have been submitted to local authorities for approval, a spokesperson for the Aragon’s regional government said on Tuesday.
Blackstone will develop the buildings by installing cooling machines and cable connections with the aim of leasing them to companies who will install computer servers.
A spokesperson for Blackstone confirmed the planned investment.
In June, the Aragon regional government said that tech giant Microsoft was planning a 6.69-billion-euro investment in data centers in the region. In May, Amazon’s cloud computing unit AWS said it would invest 15.7 billion euros to build its own data centers there.
Amazon said it would power its data centers with renewable energy. The Aragon region has a large wind power capacity.
($1 = 0.9170 euros)
(Source: Reuters)
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