Summary: I Squared Capital said Tuesday it has acquired 10 data center facilities from Cogent Fiber for $225 million in cash and intends to use them as the foundation of a new U.S. data center operating platform. The investment manager also committed a further $1 billion for upgrades, expansions and additional buys, targeting facilities intended to serve AI inference workloads.
The portfolio covers nine U.S. markets, including Chicago, Atlanta and Houston, and comprises roughly 259,000 square feet of colocation capacity and about 53 megawatts of power. I Squared described the properties as a "seed" for a broader operating platform that it will expand through capital improvements and transactions funded by the additional $1 billion.
The deal highlights a shift in the data center market away from very large, centralized facilities geared toward model training and toward sites located closer to end users for AI inference. The distinction between model training and inference was summarized in the announcement as the difference between "learning" and "doing."
Gautam Bhandari, co-founder and managing partner at I Squared Capital, emphasized the importance of three factors in determining a data center's long-term value, saying, "Location, power, and connectivity are the three variables that determine a data center’s long-term value, and these facilities have all three in markets where new supply is severely constrained."
Cogent Fiber, the seller, is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of internet service provider Cogent Communications Holdings. The announcement noted that shares of the company have shed nearly 16% in 2026.
I Squared Capital is an investor and manager in digital infrastructure, which includes data centers. The firm recently agreed last month to acquire a majority stake in Elea, which is one of the largest carrier-neutral data center platforms in Brazil, signaling continued expansion in digital infrastructure markets.
The purchased assets provide an initial footprint that I Squared plans to expand and upgrade using the committed capital. By focusing on markets with constrained new supply and emphasizing location, power, and connectivity, the firm aims to position the platform to serve workloads that require lower latency and proximity to end users, as stated in the release.
While the announcement outlines the scale of the transaction and the firm's financial commitment, it does not provide further operational detail about the planned timing of upgrades, the exact scope of expansion projects, or the identities of any additional acquisition targets. The release confines its factual claims to the purchase price, the committed capital, the portfolio's physical specifications, and the strategic intent to develop a new U.S. operating platform.
Contextual note: The transaction is presented by I Squared as a strategic bet on AI inference infrastructure, leveraging assets that combine colocation space and substantial power capacity in multiple U.S. markets.