M&A: Investment Firm Ardian Acquires Green Data Center Company Verne

Private investment and asset management firm Ardian has acquired green data center company Verne from Digital 9 Infrastructure. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Digital 9 had owned Verne since 2021, having acquired the business for £231 million in cash.

Through equity and debt, Ardian plans to invest roughly $1.2 billion to expand and accelerate Verne's business. Key regional focus areas will include Iceland, Finland, Sweden, and Norway, as well as potential opportunities more broadly in Northern Europe, the buyer said.

This is M&A deal number 148 that Sustainable Tech Partner has covered so far in 2024. See all M&A deals involving sustainability, climate tech and green IT services listed here.

Ardian Acquires Verne: Investor and Data Center Business Details

Verne, founded in 2012, is based in London, United Kingdom. The company operates with 100% renewable energy in Iceland, and 100% decarbonized energy in Finland and the UK. Key focus areas include building and operating data centers that run high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. Growth opportunities include supporting customers' AI, Machine Learning and Large Language Model (LLM) needs. 

Ardian, founded in 1996, is based in Paris, France. The company has roughly 1,050 employees across 19 offices in Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East. Ardian manages or advises roughly $164 billion in assets for more than 1,600 customers globally. Key focus areas include private equity, real assets and credit.

Ardian has $31 billion in assets under management (AUM) in direct infrastructure activities. Its investment portfolio of renewable energy in the Nordics currently aggregates to $3 billion. That portfolio includes wind parks and a Finnish district heating company, the investor said.

Ardian Acquires Verne Data Centers: Executive Perspectives

In a prepared statement about the deal, Juan Angoitia and Benoît Gaillochet, co-heads of infrastructure Europe, Ardian, said: “With this new investment, the Infrastructure team continues to demonstrate its capacity to seize unique and value accretive opportunities in the European market to deploy our new flagship infrastructure fund.” Juan Angoitia and Benoît Gaillochet, Co-Heads of Infrastructure Europe, Ardian

Added Gonzague Boutry, Ardian's managing director for digital infrastructure: "This investment is fully aligned with our approach at Ardian of investing into platforms and delivering strong returns through major industrial strategy backed by an accelerated capex plan. Ardian will support Verne’s top tier management team to match the incredible and fascinating customer AI-driven demand. With this investment, Ardian Infrastructure is now exposed to the whole digital infrastructure value chain capitalizing on global digitalization trends.”

Concluded Verne CEO Dominic Ward: “This is an exciting day for Verne as we become part of the Ardian platform. We have ambitious plans to continue growing the company and delivering sustainable data center solutions. We want to enable organizations to cost-effectively scale their digital infrastructure while reducing their environmental impact. We are hugely excited to be working with Ardian to help power our future.”

M&A and Investment Activity: Sustainable Data Centers

M&A and investor activity in the data center market has been strong -- particularly as it pertains to building energy-efficient and/or sustainable data centers that leverage renewable energy. Among the example moves to note:

• March 2024 - Startup: Verrus, backed by Google parent Alphabet, emerged from stealth mode to help customers solve data center scalability and sustainability challenges -- especially in the age of generative AI application workloads.
• March 2024 - M&A: Amazon Web Services (AWS) acquired a nuclear powered, carbon-free data center campus from Talen Energy Corp. for $650 million. Talon will receive $350 million upfront, and $300 million assuming the campus achieves expected development milestones in 2024.
• February 2024 - Integrator: Goldman Sachs Alternatives invested in Divcon Controls -- a systems integrator that helps data centers to monitor, manage, optimize and reduce their energy consumption. The investment will recapitalize Divcon. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Generative AI and Cloud Services: Energy Consumption, Scalability Challenges

Meanwhile, numerous companies -- including technology giants, startups and venture capitalists -- are seeking to solve various power supply, grid and energy consumption challenges associated with generative AI workloads, data centers and cloud services.

Among the sound bites to note:

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the future of AI requires an energy breakthrough.
• Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is betting on nuclear power to help the world to address its climate goals.
• AWS acquired a nuclear powered, carbon-free data center campus from Talen Energy Corp. for $650 million in March 2024.

At the same time, public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure are striving to embrace renewable energy to power their data centers.

We'll be watching to see if or when Verrus officially announces data center products, services and partner program initiatives.