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NTT Data said to eye US$9 bil outlay for Japan data centres - Bloomberg. 04 Aug 2026, 10:23 am The NTT logo outside Otemachi First Square, which houses the company's office, in Tokyo. (Photo by Akio Kon/Bloomberg) (Aug 4): NTT Data Group Corp expects to spend at least US$9 billion through 2033 to quadruple computing capacity to one gigawatt, addressing a surge in demand in Japan. The country's biggest data centre operator, which is owned by government-backed NTT Inc, intends to add roughly 750 megawatts of capacity over the next seven years to meet soaring demand from companies seeking to catch up in AI, people familiar with the matter said. That would mean spending at least ¥1.5 trillion (US$9.6 billion) for construction and equipment installations, estimated the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private. That's based on the assumption that each megawatt of data centre capacity installed in Japan costs ¥2 billion to ¥2.5 billion, excluding the cost of AI accelerators such as Nvidia Corp's. The scale of the investment is subject to changes in pricing and demand for computing capacity, the people said. An NTT Data spokesperson said the company does not disclose investment plans, citing company policy. Computational demand is expected to grow in tandem with the size of the economy, the fourth largest in the world, according to Yasuo Suzuki, who headed NTT Data's data centre operations in the Asia-Pacific through July. NTT Data, which competes globally against the likes of Digital Realty Trust Inc and Equinix Inc, is fielding interest from companies seeking to secure around 100 MW of capacity for AI inferencing, Suzuki said. The company now plans to add a total 42 MW of capacity this year and begin construction on a 100 MW data centre next year in Tochigi, a prefecture just north of Tokyo. NTT Data expects its spending on data centres to grow about 33% to around US$3.3 billion this fiscal year to March. "From where we stand, we don't see much competition," Suzuki said in an interview earlier this year. "There aren't many players building data centres due to a number of reasons, leaving limited supply against high demand." Questions about long-term demand and growing fears that big tech firms are building more data centres than they need have been pummeling AI-related shares around the world. But NTT Data has seen little sign of slowing demand. Companies like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp are racing to expand their own data centres in Japan while also seeking more capacity from NTT Data, according to Suzuki. Global cloud providers comprise more than 80% of the Japanese unit's data centre business revenue, he said. The bigger issue is the country's longstanding shortage of grid capacity, making it difficult to connect power-hungry data centres quickly. NTT Data relies on its partnerships with utilities such as Tokyo Electric Power Co. Some regions of the country - such as Inzai, Chiba prefecture, just east of Tokyo - suffer from chronic shortages in transmission capacity. In those areas, it will likely take eight to 10 years to secure the necessary approvals to meet data centres' electricity needs, according to Suzuki. Due to such bottlenecks, data centre capacity is taken up by customers as soon as it becomes available, he said. NTT's rival SoftBank Corp is eyeing an investment in Tepco to secure the electricity required for its aggressive data centre plans. Uploaded by Liza Shireen Koshy

Digital Infrastructure fuelled by $94B in funding: hyperscaler capex acceleration drives deal volume. Record fundraising activity across data centre REITs and infrastructure funds signals sustained investor appetite for digital real estate amid AI-driven power demand surge. Weekly deal summary. Digital infrastructure investment reached $94B across 23 major transactions this week, marking the highest weekly volume since April 2026. The majority of capital - approximately $58B - was directed toward hyperscaler-adjacent facilities and edge computing hubs, with Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon collectively accounting for $32B in announced commitments. The standout transaction involved a consortium of infrastructure investors acquiring a 600 MW operational data centre portfolio in Dallas-Fort Worth for $4.2B. The acquisition valued the assets at $7M per megawatt - a premium reflecting tight regional capacity and robust AWS co-location demand. The buyer group included Blackstone Infrastructure Partners, APG (Dutch pension fund), and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, highlighting institutional appetite for stabilised cash-flowing digital assets. A second major deal saw Equinix announce the acquisition of Digital Infrastructure Investment Partners' Amsterdam portfolio for €2.1B ($2.3B). The 180 MW facility cluster, operating at 94% utilisation, represented a strategic infill for Equinix's European AI footprint. The transaction priced at €11.7M per megawatt - a 23% premium to Equinix's 12-month average acquisition cost, underscoring yield compression in core European markets. REIT performance and capital raises. Digital Realty (DLR) closed the week up 7.2% following announcement of a $3.8B equity offering at $168 per share - a 4.1% discount to Friday's close. The capital raise targets construction funding across North America and EMEA, with particular emphasis on AI-capable facilities. Morgan Stanley analysts maintained their overweight rating, citing DLR's superior power optionality and 89% occupancy uplift potential. Equinix (EQIX) rose 4.8% to a 52-week high on the strength of the Amsterdam acquisition and FY2026 guidance raise. Management guided to 6.2% normalised FFO growth - above consensus at 5.8% - citing accelerating lease-up curves in London and Frankfurt. The stock now trades at 31.2x P/FFO, above the five-year average of 28.4x, reflecting investor confidence in AI-driven secular tailwinds. CoreWeave, the private GPU-as-a-service provider, closed a $650M Series C funding round at a $23B valuation - a 3.6x increase from its January 2026 valuation. The round was led by Blackstone and included participation from Sequoia Capital and Model Investor. The company's data centre footprint now totals 2,100 MW with 1,600 MW currently under construction, positioning it as a critical infrastructure play for generative AI compute. West Teleservices Inc., a Tier III provider, announced a $1.2B dividend recapitalisation, yielding 5.8% to investors. The transaction, arranged by Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, reflects private equity interest in stabilised regional operators, with management targeting margin expansion through 450 MW of new capacity additions over the next 24 months. Capital markets trends. The Bloomberg Digital Infrastructure Index rose 3.4% this week to 1,847 points, outperforming the MSCI Real Estate Index by 112 basis points. Year-to-date, the index has appreciated 18.6%, driven by sustained hyperscaler capex commitments now totalling $312B for the 2026-2028 period - a $32B increase from April guidance. Spread compression continued across the sector, with investment-grade digital infrastructure debt now trading at approximately 185 basis points above 10-year US Treasuries, down from 210 basis points in January. This compression reflects multiple factors: improved covenants reflecting data centre asset quality, refinancing of maturing high-coupon facilities, and genuine institutional capital redeployment into the sector from traditional fixed-income allocations. German infrastructure specialist Vonovia announced plans to raise €4.2B ($4.6B) for a European data centre fund targeting greenfield development in Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland. The vehicle aims to deploy €6.8B total capital and develop 1,200 MW of new capacity by 2028, capitalising on EU AI subsidies and industrial policy support. Power availability remains critical. Despite robust capital availability, power constraints continue limiting supply expansion. Transformer lead times remained at 36 months across ABB, Siemens, and GE portfolios, with July quotes reflecting a 12% price increase versus February benchmarks. This supply-chain friction has triggered a secondary market for used transformer inventory, with Brookfield Asset Management establishing a $500M facility to acquire, refurbish, and deploy critical power equipment. Nordic markets experienced particular momentum, with a Swedish greenfield project securing 120 MW of hydro-backed capacity at Sk0.42/kWh through 2030. This pricing - approximately 35% below Northern Virginia rates - underpinned acquisition interest from hyperscalers, with Google and Meta jointly tendering for 240 MW of additional Nordic capacity. Outlook. Data centre investment momentum is likely to sustain through Q4 2026, supported by continued hyperscaler commitments and institutional rebalancing into inflation-hedged real assets. However, rising construction costs - now averaging $11.3M per megawatt versus $9.8M in Q4 2025 - may compress returns on marginal new supply. The sector's critical dependency on power availability suggests that developers with secured renewable energy contracts will command valuation premiums of 15-20% through 2027. Need bespoke market analysis? Its advisory team delivers in-depth research tailored to your investment and operational requirements.

More and more power-hungry data centers in Switzerland - but also more and more criticism. In Switzerland, more and more data centers are being built. US companies in particular are investing hundreds of millions of francs. But now the protest is growing. 07/26/2026, 02:42 07/26/2026, 02:42 The data center in Beringen SH recently sparked fierce protest. Image: Keystone Cameras monitor the construction site in the Zurich suburb of Glattbrugg, where US provider Digital Realty is building the ZUR4 data center, expected to be completed by mid-2028. It will be its fourth on the site. The capacity of the Zurich campus will rise to over 60 megawatts. At full load, it would need about 500 gigawatt hours per year, roughly four times as much electricity as the city of Aarau. A few kilometers away, even more electricity will soon be supplied: US company Vantage is building a campus in Volketswil ZH with a capacity of 100 megawatts. According to figures from real estate advisor CBRE, installed capacity in the Zurich area has more than quintupled between 2016 and 2026, stronger growth than in the rest of Europe. Per capita, Switzerland has the most data centers after the Netherlands, and in terms of capacity, only a few countries such as Denmark or Ireland have higher values. The rapid expansion is increasingly drawing criticism. Data centers are power-hungry and need a lot of water for cooling. Recently, activists protested against the construction of a data center by US firm Stack Infrastructure in Beringen SH. It is expected to require up to 350 gigawatt hours of electricity per year - almost three-quarters of the canton's electricity consumption. The protest camp was broken up by police. Data centers are also facing headwinds worldwide. In the German state of Hesse, a citizens' movement led to a temporary construction halt. The developer, US company Edgeconnex, even wanted to put a gas power plant into operation for operation. In the US, thousands of people recently took to the streets in over 100 locations to protest data centers. In Kronstorf, Austria, environmentalists and the Green Party are fighting against a data center from Google. But the situation in Switzerland differs in one respect. There are no huge data centers here with capacities of several hundred megawatts used for training AI models, for example. Costs for electricity, construction, and personnel are too high for that. Local data centers primarily cover local demand - for cloud or software services and data storage. Providers like Google, Microsoft, or Amazon, but also local software manufacturers, rent parts or entire data centers to be close to customers. This is important for regulatory reasons, especially in the financial sector. Proximity also guarantees fast response times (latency) and redundancy, i.e., one or more backup levels in case of malfunctions. For this purpose, several centers in a region can be connected. Many data centers also house servers from external companies (colocation) or serve to connect IT systems, cloud providers, and networks (interconnection). Private consumers also use data centers. Google search queries, for example, do not go to the US but to so-called cache servers in such a center. This shortens the process. Streaming providers like Netflix or Disney+, in turn, maintain servers where the most important content is stored locally for a smooth film and series experience. In Glattbrugg ZH, Digital Realty operates what will soon be the largest data center site in Switzerland. Image: Stefan Ehrbar/CH media So are data centers unfairly pilloried - and simply indispensable for local companies and consumers? Yves Zischek, country manager for Switzerland and Austria at Digital Realty, points out that his company uses exclusively renewable energy. The ZUR2 data center in Glattbrugg is even "the most measurably efficient in the world." Digital Realty has invested over one billion francs in Switzerland including ZUR4, spends double-digit millions annually on renovation and maintenance, and employs over 100 people. Having the technological infrastructure in the country also increases independence. "Of course, we wish that political Switzerland would recognize even more what we, as a sustainably acting provider, do for Switzerland in terms of digital sovereignty." The company primarily offers colocation and interconnection services. "Switzerland hosts many large international corporations, but also a strongly growing SME and start-up world," says Zischek. His customers include companies from all sectors, including federal operations. More electricity than the city of Zurich. The local economy, with its strong focus on services, IT and research, needs a lot of computing capacity and storage space. Switzerland remains a "central and exciting market" for his company, showing moderate but very consistent growth, says Zischek. In addition to building ZUR4, Digital Realty is discussing plans for further growth - either in existing infrastructure or with potential new projects. The federal government also assumes growth. It expects data centers' electricity consumption to rise by another 43 percent by 2029 compared to 2024, to around 3 terawatt hours per year. That corresponds to about 5 percent of total local electricity demand and would be more than the city of Zurich consumes. Geographically, the centers are unevenly distributed. In 2024, more than half of Swiss data centers' electricity consumption was in the canton of Zurich. According to a CBRE assessment, installed capacity in the greater Zurich area could more than double again between 2026 and 2030, from 209 to 483 megawatts. By 2030, the Zurich area could account for three-quarters of local capacities. More centers also in Aargau. One reason for this increasing concentration is "data gravity." Just as a planet attracts other objects due to its mass, large amounts of data also develop a kind of "attractive force." Apps and services are operated where the data is located, because moving them becomes more expensive and complex as the amount increases. Because land is scarce and not every electricity supplier can provide unlimited capacity, CBRE experts assume that more centers will also emerge in neighboring cantons. They specifically name Schaffhausen and Aargau. Among the larger providers in Switzerland is US company Equinix. According to the provider Datacentermap, it operates three data centers in Zurich and two in Geneva. Spokesman Tom Farthing says that among the most important customers are companies from the finance, pharma, technology, and telecom sectors. Microsoft invests 330 million francs. Switzerland is a "strategically important market." Strict data protection laws and data sovereignty requirements make it attractive for companies looking for trustworthy colocation and interconnection services, "especially in highly regulated industries." As a politically stable market with persistently strong demand, Switzerland offers "significant growth opportunities." Equinix wants to continue investing. Electricity supply is "very reliable" in Switzerland, the workforce is highly qualified, and the digital infrastructure is advanced. However: "High operating costs can make expansion more expensive than in other markets." Moreover, the regulatory framework can be "complex." Hundreds of millions of francs flow into the construction of data centers each year. Vantage invested 370 million francs in a data center in Glattfelden ZH, for example, and 70 million francs in a section in Winterthur; the company Stack Infrastructure is spending 132 million francs to expand the campus in Gland VD. Microsoft announced in 2025 that it would invest 330 million francs in local data centers. The construction industry also benefits from the boom. At the peak, 400 people were involved in the construction in Glattfelden. However, only about 25 people are needed for operation. IT service providers and electricity and telecom suppliers also benefit. But taken on their own, data centers are not significant job creators. Rather, they are increasingly becoming a prerequisite for companies to be able to run their business at all. (schweizheute.ch)