At a glance
- The purchase covers the real estate and infrastructure only.
- The fund is closed to new investors, so allocators cannot add to it.
- AMS2 is about 40 km south-east of Amsterdam and offers roughly 5,500 sqm of lettable space.
Principal Asset Management said this week it acquired AMS2, a data center in Woerden, Netherlands, for its European Data Centre Fund I, the seventh asset in a vehicle that raised €297 million ($333.4 million).
The purchase covers the real estate and infrastructure only. Switch Datacenters, a Dutch operator with three sites, keeps operating the facility under a new 20-year lease. Terms were not disclosed. Switch has run AMS2 since acquiring it in 2014 and is distinct from the US company Switch Inc.
The fund is closed to new investors, so allocators cannot add to it.
It raised €155 million at a first close in February 2022 and held a final close in October 2023 at €297 million from 14 investors.
AMS2 is about 40 km south-east of Amsterdam and offers roughly 5,500 sqm of lettable space. It was developed as a banking data center and disaster recovery site and converted to colocation under Switch.
Switch's refurbishment and expansion will lift capacity to about 4.2MW of IT load, using direct-to-chip liquid cooling and hybrid air cooling in a closed-loop, water-free system. Waste heat will be made available to local heating networks.
Because Principal's counterparty is the operator, not an end tenant, income depends on Switch's colocation business rather than a single hyperscale lease. That puts the leasing of the refurbished 4.2MW at the center of the investment case. The site has room for a further 14MW, but that capacity has no value until it is leased.
Reported by the Fundraising desk from Data Center Dynamics and Private Wealth Daily archive. Published . Corrections