A data center managed by Digital Realty has sold a data center in Ashburn, Virginia, to GI Partners.

Dgtl Infra reports that Digital Realty has sold 43915 Devin Shafron Drive in Loudoun County to the private equity firm.

Update: BizJournal reports that the owner of the facility, through a subsidiary, is actually Starwood Capital. Digital confirmed to the publication that it wasn’t the seller, but did have a minority stake in the property and managed it for the majority owner.

The 9MW, 132,280 square foot (12,290 sqm) single-story facility, also known as Building A, reportedly sold for $150 million.

The building is still listed on Digital Realty’s website. Neither of the companies has made an official comment about the sale.

According to Dgtl Infra, the facility was previously part of a joint venture with Griffin Capital Essential Asset REIT (recently renamed Peakstone Realty Trust) and previously fully leased to a social media firm.

The publication notes that in 2020 a key tenant of the data center did not execute a long-term extension or sign a new lease with the joint venture. The lender to the property provided a notice of default for non-payment, which led to Griffin settling the debt in cash. The JV was then wound up with Digital paying Griffin $4m.

Update II: GI Partners and Starwood have since confirmed the acquisition. John Sheputis, Managing Director, and Patrick Lawler, Director of GI Partners, said: “This property is centrally situated within the largest and most important data center market in the country. The recent leasing velocity of Northern Virginia affirms the value tenants place on locating at the center of the modern digital ecosystem. This network-dense data center is a great addition to our core investment programs and demonstrates our commitment to being a trusted counterparty in all circumstances.”

Andres Panza, Managing Director at Starwood Capital, added: "We are excited to have realized this investment after successfully completing our business plan to lease this high-performing asset."

The data center was built in 2010 and is 100 percent leased to 'two credit-worthy tenants'. CBRE Data Center Capital Markets represented the seller on this transaction.

The newly-sold data center is part of Digital’s 230MW, 98-acre campus. Digital acquired the Devin Shafron buildings, previously known as the Loudoun Exchange, in 2007 for $62.5 million. Much of the campus is leased to Amazon.

The campus's original buildings were built in 2001 by Archon and were known as the Genisus Loudoun Exchange. At the time, the WSJ noted the lack of leasing demand at the campus in the wake of the dotcom crash.

The company still lists 43881 (Building B), 43791 (Building D), and 43830 (Building F) on its website but has divested several of the buildings on the campus in recent years.

43831 Devin Shafron Drive (Building C) was seeded to a new Digital Realty-owned REIT listed in Singapore known as Digital Core REIT in 2021. It has been leased to a ‘global cloud provider’ from 2006 until April 2026 with options to extend.

43790 Devin Shafron Drive (Building E), previously leased to AWS, was sold to Menlo Equities in September 2021.

Founded in 2001, GI Partners invests in private equity, real estate, and data infrastructure. It founded Digital Realty in 2004 before listing the company and divesting its stake. The investment firm still maintains a number of data center investments.