Blue Owl plans a data-center REIT seeded with $6.5 billion

Blue Owl Capital is planning a data-center REIT that would arrive with roughly $6.5 billion of its own assets already inside, a structure that gives public investors a named portfolio to underwrite rather than a blind pool, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The firm would raise additional money through an initial public offering and later share sales to buy more data centers, the people said, with deliberations ongoing and details still subject to change.

The structure follows a template that just found demand, with one governance twist: Blackstone's Digital Infrastructure Trust raised $2 billion in its May debut as a blind pool, meaning investors bought shares before the REIT's holdings were named, whereas Blue Owl's vehicle, according to the people, would open with an anchor portfolio in place. A blind pool prices a manager's sourcing ability, while an anchored REIT prices assets an investor can inspect; for allocators whose diligence runs asset by asset, that is the difference between backing a process and buying a book.

Blue Owl closed its most recent digital infrastructure fund in May with $7 billion of commitments, and the firm now manages more than $319 billion across credit, real assets and strategic capital, according to its website. The scale of its data-center holdings extends beyond the new vehicle: Bloomberg News has reported that Stack Infrastructure, a Blue Owl-owned data center company with sites in the Americas, Europe and Asia, is weighing a sale of its Asia operations in a transaction that could be valued above $30 billion.

The public-market response was muted: Blue Owl shares rose as much as 1.2% on the news but have fallen nearly 21% this year, leaving the company valued above $18 billion. Behind that muted response is a spending boom, with Bloomberg Intelligence projecting annual global data-center capital expenditure could exceed $1.2 trillion by 2028, up from $421 billion last year. That capital need is why the IPO calendar already includes a comparable in Brookfield-backed Csquare Inc., which pulled in $1.2 billion in July.

For allocators, the anchor is the structural difference. The plan would convert owned data-center assets into a listed vehicle, another turn in the private-markets convergence this publication has tracked. The $6.5 billion seed is the test. Blackstone has shown investors will enter a data-center blind pool; Blue Owl is wagering they will buy a portfolio they can inspect first. If the listing clears, expect other managers holding owned infrastructure to bring assets, not promises, to the market. If it stumbles, the firms waiting to monetize data-center real estate will have read the public market's answer.