Blackstone To Invest €7.5 Billion For Data Centres In Spain

US-based investment giant Blackstone has signalled another huge data centre investment on this side of the pond – with Spain the target market this time.

Reuters cited Spain’s Aragon’s regional government as saying on Tuesday that Blackstone plans to invest 7.5 billion euros (£6.3 billion or $8.2 billion) to develop data centres in Aragon, boosting the region’s growing status as a major cloud computing hub in Europe.

The investment is another indication of the huge amounts of money being directed into the data centre sector, amid the growth in both AI and cloud services.

Earlier this week for example Google signed the world’s first corporate agreement to buy nuclear power to satisfy the intense power usage of generative artificial intelligence (AI) deployments in data centres.

Aragon data centres

According to the Reuters report, the Blackstone investment for data centres in Aragon, comes after similar investments from tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon.

A spokesperson for the Aragon’s regional government reportedly said on Tuesday the regional capital Zaragoza in northeastern Spain has seen so far 19 data centres projects submitted to local authorities for approval,

Blackstone will reportedly develop the buildings by installing cooling machines and cable connections with the aim of leasing them to companies who will install computer servers.

A spokesperson for Blackstone confirmed the planned investment, Reuters reported.

It comes after the Aragon regional government said in June that tech giant Microsoft was planning a 6.69-billion-euro investment in data centres in the region, and Amazon’s cloud computing unit AWS said in May it would invest 15.7 billion euros to build its own data centres there.

Amazon said it would power its data centres with renewable energy, and reportedly the Aragon region benefits from having a large wind power capacity.

UK investment

Blackstone has made other sizable data centre investments on this side of the Atlantic.

Last month in September 2024, Blackstone said it would invest £10 billion in data centre in England’s north east, at the proposed site of Britishvolt battery factory, in order to create one of the largest artificial intelligence data centres in Europe.

That investment will see over 4,000 jobs being created as a result, including 1,200 roles dedicated to the construction of the site in Blyth, Northumberland.

It comes after the UK government had in September designated data centres in the UK as critical national infrastructure (CNI), highlighting the importance of these facilities amid ongoing cyber threats from hackers, criminals and hostile nation states.

Also in September 2024, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it planned to invest £8 billion over the next five years (2024-2028) building, operating, and maintaining data centres in the UK.