Israeli real estate developer Azrieli Group has bought a 20 percent stake in ‘Compass Holdco’ for £135 million, the company’s first investment in the North American data center market.

The deal has already been signed and the money has been transferred to Compass.

Stake dinner

Tel Aviv-based Azrieli also has the option to increase its stake in Compass to 33 percent by December 2020.

The company will join existing investors RedBird Capital Partners and Ontario Teachers’ Pension plan who are major shareholders in Compass Datacenters.

RedBird and Ontario Teachers’ first invested in Compass in 2017. The amount both companies put in was undisclosed, but at the time Robert Covington, Partner at RedBird, said: “Compass now has the ability to develop larger, multi-phase projects for customers, as well as to invest in the acquisition of real estate in markets that support customer needs.”

Ontario Teachers’ has invested extensively in data centers and infrastructure - it has stakes in companies including Q9 Networks, and TierPoint.

Compass has also announced a plan to develop up to $3 billion in new data center campuses following additional capital from Red Bird and Ontario Teachers as well as Azrieli’s investment.

Last week, Compass began building the first two data centers in its Goodyear, Arizona hyperscale campus. Once fully built out the campus will contain eight data centers with a total 350MW Capacity on site.

Compass is also constructing its first data center in Northern Virginia. The 6MW Loudoun County facility will be the first data center as part of a planned 75MW campus.