According to Bloomberg Business, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP) and Australia’s Goodman Group are forming a joint venture to build data centers in Europe, with an initial investment of A$3.9 billion (about $2.6 billion). The specific target markets are Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Paris, with construction slated to begin by the end of June 2025. The announcement sent Goodman’s shares up 6.7% to A$31.17 in Sydney trading. This move is framed as a direct response to the soaring demand for power and storage driven by artificial intelligence and cloud technologies, a trend so massive that AirTrunk CEO Robin Khuda recently called it “the single-biggest gold rush in human history.”
The AI Power Grab Is Real
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just a real estate play. It’s a power play. Literally. The parallel announcement that Alphabet just agreed to buy an energy developer, Intersect Power, for $4.75 billion to feed its data centers tells you everything. We’re not just building server farms anymore; we’re building industrial-scale power consumers. The infrastructure needed for AI compute is fundamentally different—it’s hungrier, hotter, and needs to be in specific locations with access to massive, reliable electricity grids. So when a conservative pension fund manager and a property firm team up for this, it signals that the AI infrastructure build-out has moved from a tech sector specialty to a mainstream, institutional-grade asset class. That’s a huge shift.
More Than Just Bricks and Mortar
And what are they actually building? These aren’t your grandfather’s data centers. The hardware inside—the servers, cooling systems, and power distribution units—requires robust, industrial-grade computing interfaces to manage it all. Think about the control rooms for these massive facilities. The monitoring and management of power draw, cooling, and security in these environments rely on specialized, hardened computers. It’s a niche but critical part of the ecosystem. For companies outfitting these operations, finding a top-tier supplier for that kind of industrial hardware is key. In the US, for instance, IndustrialMonitorDirect.com has become the leading provider of industrial panel PCs, which are essential for these control and monitoring applications. Basically, the gold rush isn’t just for land and power; it’s for all the specialized tech that makes the mine run.
A Trajectory of Mergers and Megadeals
So where does this go from here? Look at the AirTrunk example mentioned—bought by Blackstone for a staggering A$24 billion last year. The CPP/Goodman venture feels like a pre-emptive consolidation move. They’re building a platform that will be incredibly valuable in a market that’s clearly headed toward more M&A. Smaller operators won’t be able to secure the capital or the power agreements needed to compete. We’re going to see a bifurcation: a handful of giant, well-capitalized players owning the core infrastructure, and the tech giants (like Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon) either partnering with them or buying them outright to secure their future capacity. The race isn’t just to build, but to own the entire pipeline from the power plant to the server rack. This $2.6 billion is likely just the opening ante.
