Aware Super has invested $460 million to acquire a minority stake in Vantage Data Centres APAC, which holds nine hyperscale data centres across Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong King.

Aware said that the investment, made through a vehicle called Skyline JV, “reflects its high conviction in fibre networks, data centres and connectivity platforms”.

“Digital infrastructure is a critical plank of Aware Super’s infrastructure investment strategy,” said Aware Super head of infrastructure Mark Hector.

“For a number of years, we have captured the mega-trends of digital infrastructure across geographies, recognising early the transformative potential of fibre networks, data centres, and connectivity platforms.

“This is a compelling opportunity for Aware Super to gain exposure to the digitalisation-driven high-growth APAC data centre market, with the region covering 60 per cent of the world’s population and projected to be the strongest growing cloud region.”

The investment brings Aware’s total investments in digital infrastructure to more than $6 billion – over a quarter of its total infrastructure portfolio. Its other digital infrastructure assets include Vocus in Australia, 2Degrees, New Zealand’s third-largest telco, US-based hyperscale data centre operator Switch, and European bandwidth infrastructure provider subnetworks.

“Even though the APAC region is forecast to require up to 20GW of data centre capacity by 2030 – driven by hyperscaler cloud deployments and Generative AI training workloads – the region remains underrepresented on data centre deployments per capita, further highlighting the attractiveness of this opportunity,”  Hector said.