IPI Combines Infomart, Some T5 Assets to Form New Data Center Provider

The owners of T5 Data Centers and Infomart Data Centers assets left after Equinix’s acquisition of the Infomart Dallas carrier hotel have combined their Infomart holdings with some T5 assets to launch a new data center provider called Stack Infrastructure.

It is the second new data center provider announced this month. The first one, Evoque Data Center Solutions, was formed by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners using the $1.1 billion data center portfolio the investor recently acquired from AT&T.

Evoque is a retail colocation provider, while Stack will provide various types of wholesale data center leases. In recent years, most of these multi-megawatt leases have been signed by cloud giants, or “hyperscalers,” who in the rush to grow their platforms’ computing capacity have driven an unprecedented amount of growth in the data center provider space.

The breakneck rate of growth, and the anticipation that it will not slow for the foreseeable future, has attracted a lot of investment to the data center sector, including from new types of investors. Stack’s backer, IPI Data Center Partners Management, is a joint venture between real estate investor Iron Point Partners and Iconiq Capital, a wealth management firm whose clients include some of Silicon Valley’s richest players. IPI was formed and made its first data center play – an investment in T5 – in 2016.

Related:T5 and Iconiq’s IPI Plan Campus around Facebook Data Center in Texas

“The launch of Stack is an important milestone in the execution of a carefully crafted strategy to bring a unique understanding of the needs of enterprise and hyperscale users to the market,” Phil Koen, chairman of Stack’s board of directors and Infomart’s director and interim CEO, said in a statement.

Stack’s top leadership team consists of seasoned industry executives, three of them from the recently formed Infomart C-suite. Stack CEO Brian Cox is a former COO of Cologix who since last year was Infomart’s chief executive; Stack CRO Ty Miller held the same role at Infomart since 2018; and Donough Roche, the new company’s COO, was COO at Infomart, which announced the appointment in June.

Miller and Roche both used to be top sales executives at Digital Realty Trust, the world’s largest wholesale data center provider, which now also has a substantial retail colocation business. Stack’s VP of construction and development, Rick Waddle, is also a Digital Realty alum, having joined the giant as VP of development when it acquired DuPont Fabros Technology.

Stack launches with about 1.5 million square feet of space and 100MW of existing data center capacity across eight sites, including in all the biggest US data center markets: Northern Virginia, Silicon Valley, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Chicago. It’s also present in Portland and Atlanta, which are near the top of the list but are considered secondary markets.

The company owns additional development parcels in all six markets it currently covers.

Focused on the wholesale data center business, it will provide build-to-suit data centers and entire hyperscale campuses, as well as wholesale colocation, private data center suites, and powered shells.

Its Virginia, Portland, and Silicon Valley facilities are former Infomart sites; Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas are T5. Infomart’s anchor tenant in Portland has been LinkedIn. Not all data centers in T5’s portfolio went to Stack.

Cox, Miller, and Roche were all appointed to their roles at Infomart after IPI acquired the three Infomart properties from ASB Real Estate Investments in March of 2018. Earlier that year, ASB had gotten $800 million from Equinix for Infomart Dallas, one of the most connected buildings in the country.