Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC, has announced a new partnership with Beijing-based data center developer GDS to develop several hyperscale build-to-suit (BTS) data centers in multiple cities across China. The first round of projects under the joint venture are to be built for a single strategic customer, identified only as a “leading internet and cloud service provider,” but which Data Economy has conjectured is likely Alibaba.
The GDS partnership is the latest in a determined digital infrastructure investment push by Singapore’s GIC. Earlier this summer, it was announced that GIC would form a $1 billion joint venture with California’s Equinix, the world’s largest data center provider, for hyperscale buildouts primarily designed for large tech firms on the U.S. West Coast.
News of the deal comes as Atlanta-based money manager Invesco has released the results of its latest Global Sovereign Asset Management Study.
Among the more intriguing takeaways of the survey—conducted with 139 chief investment officers managing more than $20 trillion in country assets—technology is becoming an increasingly alluring investment target, particularly for the largest sovereigns. Invesco found that 64% of large sovereign wealth funds, defined as those with more than $100 billion in assets under management, had a dedicated technology portfolio or research team. And the largest percentage of respondents with focused technology portfolios—89% —came not from Asia or North America, but from the Middle East, where traditionally oil-rich sovereigns are seeking to diversify away from reliance on petroleum.
