Australia-based Goodman Group has signed an agreement with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to establish a AUD 14 billion European data center partnership, marking CPP Investments’ first dedicated data center venture in the region. The 50-50 joint venture includes an initial capital commitment of AUD 3.9 billion to develop facilities in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Paris.
The partnership, named the Goodman European Data Centre Development Partnership, will develop four projects with a combined 435 megawatts of primary power and 282 megawatts of IT load. The sites are located in Europe’s core FLAP markets, which are critical hubs for cloud service providers and AI-focused workloads.
All projects have secured power connections and planning approvals, with infrastructure work already underway. Construction is expected to begin by June 2026, supporting faster delivery timelines for hyperscale and enterprise customers.
For CPP Investments, the deal expands its global digital infrastructure portfolio as demand for AI training, inference, and cloud services accelerates. Goodman brings development expertise and a powered land bank, while CPP adds long-term capital focused on stable returns. The transaction is expected to close in stages by March 2026, subject to customary conditions.
The deal comes amid accelerating global investment in AI-related infrastructure. Alphabet recently announced plans to acquire energy-focused developer Intersect for $4.75 billion to support expanding U.S. data center capacity, while Microsoft committed $17.5 billion to scale AI and cloud infrastructure in India over the next four years, highlighting rising capital deployment to support AI-driven compute demand.
