A quartet of executives will this week unveil a multibillion-pound European data centre venture amid urgent demand to address capacity shortfalls in AI infrastructure development.
Sky News understands that the former Global Switch executives will on Thursday set out details of plans for Astor, a new venture launched by Margaux Platforms, a private markets investment firm.
Astor is initially being backed by at least €100m of equity from Margaux, with plans to deploy more than €2bn of equity over the medium term, according to sources close to the company.
In total, it is understood to believe that roughly €5bn will be required to fund the capital expenditure demands of its six-site pipeline in Berlin, Madrid, Marseilles and Milan.
The London-based company has been set up by the four former Global Switch executives in an attempt to meet the exponential growth in demand for digital infrastructure across the continent.
It believes it can overcome one of the principal obstacles to such infrastructure development – the so-called ‘last-mile’ challenge of delivering IT capacity close to end-users in grid-constrained locations.
“Europe is three-to-five years behind the US in AI and cloud penetration, and it is beset by aging grid infrastructure and lengthening power connection queues which pose a threat to Europe’s economic and digital sovereignty ambitions,” said one source.
Astor’s founders – Elliot Dittes, Benjamin Ryder, Robert Hogan and Benjamin Worth – have been joined in the venture by chairman Daniel Wong, former global co-head of Macquarie Capital and now head of Europe at Stonepeak, one of the joint owners of the AA.
An Astor spokesman said in response to an enquiry from Sky News: “The next phase of digital growth demands agile infrastructure that can be delivered quickly even as access to grid power becomes more constrained.
“Astor meets this challenge by unlocking capacity where it’s needed most with best-in-class design solutions that adapt to environments and evolving compute workloads for the world’s critical technologies of scale.”
Source: Sky News / IRN