Swiss-based private equity firm Partners Group has agreed to acquire Digital Halo from its existing shareholders, including ARCH Capital.

The target firm is a Singapore-headquartered data centre operator focused on Southeast and North Asia. Partners Group plans to initially commit around US$400 million alongside ARCH Capital, which will stay on as a minority shareholder.

Partners Group intends to work with the management team to transform Digital Halo into a next-generation data centre platform with over 500 megawatts of data centre capacity across multiple markets in Southeast and North Asia.

The plan includes the construction and operation of two seed assets in Manila, Philippines and Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Both assets are located in high-growth data centre markets with potential for significant expansion.

Led by a management team with a strong industry track record, Digital Halo will provide built-to-suit and co-location services to hyperscale and enterprise customers under long-term contracts, generating a predictable revenue profile.

Strong demand in Asia

The company benefits from the robust demand for data centre capacity in Asia, which is being driven by structural thematic tailwinds such as enterprise cloud migration, continued growth in data usage and e-commerce, and demand for artificial intelligence ( AI ) training and inference workloads.

Data centres are a key global investment theme for Partners Group, which has invested over US$4 billion in data centres globally since 2021. Current assets include EdgeCore, a leading hyperscale data centre platform in the United States; atNorth, a leading pan-Nordic data centre platform; and GreenSquareDC, a data centre provider in Australia. The firm will apply its proven platform-building approach to Digital Halo.

“Data centres continue to be a thematic area of focus for us globally, and we believe that specific markets within Asia will offer significant growth opportunities in the years ahead,” says Luv Parikh, managing director, head of infrastructure Asia, at Partners Group.

Kai Goh, co-founder and chief executive officer of Digital Halo, adds: “After bringing our first site in Manila into operation, securing power and all necessary building permits in Johor, and obtaining exclusivity on a third site, we are pleased to bring Partners Group on board to drive the next phase of our growth.”

The company plans to “build and operate next-generation, sustainable and AI-ready data centre campuses that service the needs of both US and Asian hyperscalers and enterprises across Asia”, Go adds.

Partners Group’s infrastructure business has US$27 billion in assets under managemenr globally. The firm was advised by Latham & Watkins on the transaction.