In a funding round led by Goldman Sachs and private equity group TPG Capital, Singapore-based digital startup AirTrunk has raised AU$400 million, making the transaction largest in terms of pre-revenue capital raised by a startup in Asia-Pacific.
According to a statement from the company, the funding will be used for the construction of data center projects in Sydney and Melbourne. Founder and Chief Financial Officer, Robin Khuda aspires for AirTrunk to transform into a significant digital player in cloud services across the Asia Pacific.
The company, established in 2012, builds and operates large-scale data centers with reliability, technology innovation, and energy efficiency. The funding will be used for the construction of the two sites. Among other long-term plans, the company has plans to invest up to AU$1.7 billion in data centers across Australia.
According to AirTrunk, the facilities are expected to be fully operational in the third quarter of 2017, supporting more than 20 MW of IT load out of their capacity of 130 MW, and providing its customers accessible and sustainable data services at comparatively lower costs. Khuda said,
I am delighted to have completed this capital raising that will lay a solid platform in fulfilling our ambition in becoming the Asia-Pacific region’s leading data center platform supporting large-scale enterprise and technology companies. We had a strong level of interest in our fundraising process globally, but Goldman Sachs and TSSP stood out for their level of support, industry knowledge and commitment to the AirTrunk business over the long-term.
Robin also stated,
I am confident that the combination of the management team at AirTrunk and the investment and support of Goldman Sachs and TSSP, will enable AirTrunk to execute its vision that will support cloud, content and large enterprise customers across the Asia-Pacific region.
The deal, is highly unusual because it has more equity than previous transactions of any other company— about 60% of its funding is in equity and the rest of it is in debt. Secondly, the funding is based on a forecast of the first year’s earnings of data centers.
Khuda believes Australia has the potential to be among the world’s leading data center service providers because of the country’s wide adoption of cloud computing technologies.
