Includes dedicated data center companies, investment managers, cloud & hosting providers, telecommunications companies that actively invest, own, and manage data centers in Europe.Description
List of 5 large data center investors in Europe
Data centers play a central role in the digital infrastructure of the modern world. They form the backbone for cloud services, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) applications, streaming platforms and corporate IT. The demand for powerful and energy-efficient data centers is growing rapidly worldwide as data consumption and digital networking continue to increase. In this context, Europe is one of the most important markets for data centers. Accordingly, a number of highly specialized data center investors are also active here. The European region has seen strong growth in recent years, particularly in the so-called “FLAP-D” markets: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin. These cities are central hubs for digital infrastructure and are characterized by high connectivity, favorable regulatory conditions and a strong corporate sector. However, in addition to the major metropolitan areas, investors’ interest in data centers is also growing in secondary markets such as Madrid, Warsaw and Stockholm, as they offer lower operating costs and new opportunities for expansion. Below we take a closer look at 5 top players from our list of the largest data center investors in Europe. Some of the data center investors active in Europe are headquartered outside the continent.
1. Digital Realty (Austin/USA)
Digital Realty is one of the world’s leading providers of data center, colocation and interconnection services. With over 300 data centers in 25 countries, the company is one of the largest operators of digital infrastructure. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange under “DLR”, Digital Realty had a market value of over USD 40 billion in 2023 and manages a total capacity of more than 2,300 megawatts. In Europe in particular, the company has significantly expanded its presence through the acquisition of Interxion in 2020 for USD 8.4 billion. Today, Digital Realty operates over 100 data centers in more than 15 European countries, including the major FLAP-D markets. The company is also expanding into new markets such as Spain, Italy and Poland. Investors are backing Digital Realty, including major players such as Blackstone, Vanguard Group and State Street, who are betting on the booming digital infrastructure market. Digital Realty also cooperates with hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud to provide scalable and secure IT solutions. Overall, the company is a standout player in our list of data center investors.
2. maincubes Holding & Service GmbH (Frankfurt am Main/Germany)
maincubes Holding & Service GmbH is a European data center operator based in Frankfurt am Main that offers colocation services in strategically important markets. The company operates several data centers in Frankfurt (FRA01, FRA02, FRA04) as well as in Berlin (BER01) and Amsterdam (AMS01). In Germany, maincubes is particularly active in the Rhine-Main region. The planned FRA04 in Dietzenbach will offer an IT capacity of 40 megawatts on 12,500 square meters and is scheduled to go into operation by 2027. The data centers are geared towards high-performance computing and AI applications, with maincubes also focusing on sustainability and energy efficiency. In this context, the newly built FRA02 in Frankfurt meets the criteria of the EU Taxonomy, which underlines the company’s commitment to environmentally friendly data centers. With investments of over one billion euros, maincubes is one of the fastest growing data center providers in Germany.
3. G-Core (Contern/Luxembourg)
G-Core is a cloud and hosting provider from the city of Contern in Luxembourg. The company owns and operates around 40 data centers around the world. The company currently has over 140 CDN PoPs on all continents except Antarctica, over 800 cache servers and over 5000 peering partners. Its more than 1,000 customers include Bandai Namco, a major video game company, and TEDx, an American media organization that organizes conferences. G-Core’s products include CDN, a streaming platform, hosting, cloud, DDoS protection, storage and DNS. This makes the company a key player in our list of the largest investors in the data center asset class.
4. Global Switch (London/England)
Global Switch is a dedicated data center company based in the UK. Founded in 1998, the company is based in London and owns and manages thirteen data centers in prime locations across Europe and Asia Pacific. Global Switch builds energy-efficient, large-scale data centers and offers a variety of solutions, such as a flexible and scalable end-2-end service for its data centers. As one of the highly relevant data center owners in Europe, the company is also an outstanding example for our list of data center investors.
5. Google Data Centers (Mountain View/USA)
Google Data Centers is a global cloud and hosting provider and a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. The company owns and manages around 40 data centers worldwide – including in Europe, including Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands. Google’s data centers are pioneers in terms of energy efficiency and the company has also set itself the goal of becoming carbon-free by 2030. Google’s data centers are among the most secure in the world and are located in Europe, America and Southeast Asia.
Picture Source: Unsplash (Taylor Vick, 10.12.21; Dylan Carr, 10.12.21; Alexandre Debiève, 26.08.24)
Insights into a fairly new asset class: Definition, characteristics, hotspots
The European data centre market is one of the fastest growing investment markets. The rapidly increasing number of cloud services and internet users makes it mandatory to create dedicated data centers. Our list covers the most important data center operators, owners and investors that are active in Europe.
What is a Data Center?
A data center is a building that hosts numerous servers that are used for the processing and storage of massive amounts of data. Data centers are needed to host websites or online services. Main players in the industry are American cloud providers like AWS or Google Cloud.
Why are they a special and distinctive form of property?
Data centers have some special properties. The servers have to be online 24/7 at 365 days per year. Consequently, the data center operator has to make sure that the power supply is never disconnected. Therefore, data centers have always additional diesel generators for the case of a blackout. Furthermore, data centers have extensive cooling, that also is responsible for half of the electricity consumption.
Where are the hotspots?
When launching a cloud server at one of the American market leaders, you will directly the most important cities for data centers in Europe: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris. These cities host an extraordinarily high number of data centers and are well-connected by cables with American data centers. There is also an increasing amount of data centers in Scandinavia. This especially makes sense because of lower temperatures that reduce cooling power costs.
Types of Investors
There are different kind of owners, operators and investors in the European data center market. We will introduce them in the following.
Cloud & Hosting Companies
Cloud companies are mainly offering cloud and hosting services for their customers. Main players in the market are Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. A main European player is OVHCloud. These companies are requiring lots of datacenter to provide reliable and low-latency services for their customers.
Dedicated Data Center Operators
These companies were mostly the first ones to operate, develop and invest in data centers. Most large-scale data center operators are coming from the United States, like Digital Realty. However, dozens of regional data center investors are created every year.
Investment Managers
More and more traditional real estate companies and real estate investment managers are venturing into the data center market. Increasing revenues and a highly lucrative investment field lures more and more traditional investors. A good example is AXA Investment Managers, the investment arm of the French insurer.
Telcos & Others
Also, most telecommunications companies are slowly venturing into the data center market. Next to the largest European telcos like Telekom and Vodafone there are also foreign telcos like NTT or China Telecom venturing into the data center market.
The need for clean energy
More than 2% of the world’s greenhouse emissions are caused by data center power consumption. Therefore, most data center operators are also active players in the renewable energy market. For example, Microsoft is one of the most active acquirers of renewable energy Power Purchase Agreements in Europe. In 2019, the company signed a 15 year PPA for 90MW of wind energy from wind farm developer Eneco. The deal starts in 2022. Also, Facebook directly signs various PPAs for its data centers. These PPA are often offered by the largest renewable energy investors in Europe.
Company headquarters of investors active in Europe
In our list of the largest data center investors in Europe most of the companies are either based in Europe or in the USA. For a better understanding of the list our research team has prepared maps of Europe and the US.
Locations of European investors
On the map to the left each headquarter of a data center investor active in Europe has been marked with a dot. There are multiple data center investors in various countries and they often allocate close to each other in strategic areas. European data center investors are often located in London, Frankfurt, Milan, and Luxembourg.
Locations of US-based investors
Most of the data center investors in our list are from the United States. Many of the data center investors are located in large cities like Los Angeles, New York, Austin, or Dallas. They are often situated near major internet hubs to minimise latency.
Interesting statistics compounded with our database
Our research team can use our unique list to create statistics that provide a deeper insight into our list. Below we have prepared sample statistics for you.
Countries of origin
Most of the active data center investors are from the United States. This is no surprise as the US has a pioneering role in this field of activity. 31 firms in our list are from the United States. The USA is followed by the United Kingdom with 20 data center investors and Germany with 12 companies. Next to other European countries like Spain and the Netherlands many data center investors in our list are based in the Asia-Pacific region.
Headquarters
Most data center investors active in Europe are based in London. There are 12 data center investors in London. London is followed by Frankfurt with four data center investors situated there. After Frankfurt there are multiple cities that have three Data center investors. Among them are Singapore, Los Angeles and Luxembourg.
Investor types
The investors in our list are categorised into 5 categories. Data center company, cloud & hosting provider, telcos, investment manager, or other. Some companies are categorised as both a cloud & hosting investor and a data center company. Over 60 of the companies in our list are labeled as data center companies. Over 29 are cloud & hosting providers and over 20 are investment managers
Any questions? Get in touch!
Leo Semmelmann, Founder
contact [at] researchgermany.com
+49 (0) 89 92927741
We are looking forward to help you in case of any questions, remarks and individual requests. Feel free to get in touch via email, live chat or phone. We can also offer you package prices and can create individual lists.
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