May 26 (Reuters) – Investment manager I Squared Capital on Tuesday said that it has bought 10 data \u200ccenter facilities from Cogent Fiber for $225 million in \u200ccash, marking its latest bet on AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n
I Squared said it plans \u200bto use the assets as a \u201cseed\u201d for a new U.S. data center operating platform, committing a further $1 billion for upgrades, expansions and acquisitions.<\/p>\n
The deal, spanning nine locations, underscores the \u200cshift from large, centralized \u2060data centers used for model training to those deployed closer to end-users for AI inference.<\/p>\n
The \u2060distinction between model training and inference reflects the difference between \u201clearning\u201d and \u201cdoing.”<\/p>\n
\u201cLocation, power, and connectivity are the three variables that determine \u200ba data \u200bcenter\u2019s long-term value, and \u200bthese facilities have all three \u200cin markets where new supply is severely constrained,\u201d said Gautam Bhandari, co-founder and managing partner at I Squared Capital.<\/p>\n
The deal includes about 53 megawatts of power capacity and about 259,000 square feet of colocation space across nine U.S. \u200cmarkets, including Chicago, Atlanta and \u200bHouston.<\/p>\n
Cogent Fiber is an indirect wholly \u200bowned subsidiary of internet \u200bservice provider Cogent Communications Holdings. Shares of \u200cthe company have shed nearly \u200b16% in 2026.<\/p>\n
I \u200bSquared Capital invests in and manages digital infrastructure, including data centers.<\/p>\n
Last month, the investment manager agreed to acquire \u200ba majority \u200cstake in Elea, one of the largest carrier-neutral data \u200bcenter platforms in Brazil.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Pritam Biswas in \u200bBengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 26 (Reuters) – Investment manager I Squared Capital on Tuesday said that it has bought 10 data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,1288,227579,227578,14868,227580,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-446159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-capital","tag-cogent-communications","tag-cogent-fiber","tag-data-center","tag-model-training","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}