Digital Realty and a consortium including Equinix are competing to acquire atNorth, a prominent Scandinavian datacenter operator, according to reports. Partners Group, a Swiss private equity and real estate business which bought atNorth in 2021, is understood to be seeking between €4 billion ($4.6 billion) and €4.5 billion ($5.2 billion), according to Bloomberg and the FT.
Digital Realty and Equinix, two of the biggest international datacenter operators, are among the bidders eager to acquire the firm. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is an investor that Equinix works with. The next round of bidding has begun, and discussions are still taking place. An instant presence in Northern Europe may be provided to the bidder by a possible acquisition.
AtNorth has nine datacenters spread across nations with milder temperatures. Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland are places where AI workloads can benefit greatly from cooling. Additional capacity and access to markets outside of the major European centers of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris (FLAP) would be provided by the acquisition to either buyer.
Liquid-Cooled Deployments for AI and HPC
AtNorth is a Nordic data center operator that prioritizes high-density colocation, HPC, and AI-ready infrastructure with an emphasis on sustainability. With its headquarters located in Reykjavik, Iceland, the firm operates an expanding network of data centers in Iceland, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark that are well-positioned to support workloads in North America and Europe thanks to robust subsea connectivity and an abundance of renewable energy.
Its facilities, which include liquid-cooled deployments for AI and other high-performance workloads, are built for settings that require a lot of electricity and cooling. Using a combination of colocation, build-to-suit campuses, and HPC-as-a-Service (through its Gompute platform), atNorth provides a whole stack from racks to massive computing clusters for businesses, hyperscalers, and research institutions.
By focusing on circular design, integrating heat-reuse projects into local district heating, and using only renewable energy, atNorth positions itself as a provider of more compute for a better world, catering to clients who wish to scale AI and HPC while reducing total cost of ownership and decarbonizing their infrastructure pipelines.
