A BlackRock-led consortium has opened formal talks to acquire Stack Infrastructure's Asia-Pacific data center portfolio for approximately $25 billion, marking the largest hyperscale infrastructure carveout in the region since Digital Realty's $3.4 billion Singapore platform sale in 2022. The transaction, if completed, would transfer operational control of fourteen facilities across Tokyo, Singapore, Jakarta, and Sydney—representing 1.2 gigawatts of contracted capacity—into a consortium structure that sources close to the process say includes at least two sovereign wealth funds and one Canadian pension allocator. Stack Infrastructure declined comment. BlackRock's infrastructure team did not respond to inquiries by press time.
The timing reflects compression in the AI-infrastructure window. Stack's Asia-Pacific footprint sits directly in the path of hyperscaler expansion commitments made between Q3 2024 and Q1 2025, when Microsoft, Google, and Amazon collectively announced $47 billion in regional data center buildouts. Jakarta alone saw three new AI-optimized zone licenses issued in the past six months, and Stack controls two of the parcels with pre-approved power allocations exceeding 400 megawatts. The consortium structure allows BlackRock to distribute risk across limited partners while maintaining operational governance—a model the firm used successfully in its $12.5 billion Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Fund III, which closed eighteen months ahead of schedule in September 2024. The $25 billion price implies a forward EBITDA multiple near 22x, elevated but defensible given power scarcity and the embedded hyperscaler tenant base.
What matters for allocators is less the headline figure than the financing architecture. Stack Infrastructure's Asia-Pacific arm carries $6.8 billion in project-level debt, most of it yen- and Singapore-dollar-denominated with floating rates tied to SONIA and TONA. If the consortium closes with incremental leverage—standard practice in BlackRock infrastructure deals—the entity's loan-to-value could approach 65 percent, leaving equity returns highly sensitive to both power-price escalation clauses and the renewal terms of anchor tenants. Three of Stack's largest leases, representing 38 percent of total capacity, come up for renewal between Q4 2026 and Q2 2027. The consortium will inherit those negotiations at a moment when hyperscalers are aggressively renegotiating older contracts to capture wholesale power savings now available through direct utility partnerships. Any re-contracting at lower rates would compress distributable cash flow and test the consortium's ability to meet preferred return hurdles, typically 12 to 14 percent in BlackRock infrastructure vehicles.
Operators should track three follow-on events. First, whether BlackRock files a Hong Kong listing prospectus within ninety days of close, a maneuver that would provide partial liquidity and price discovery for consortium members while keeping the asset under long-term control. Second, the renewal outcome for Stack's largest Singapore tenant—a Tier-1 hyperscaler whose lease expires in Q1 2027 and whose re-contracting terms will set pricing expectations across the portfolio. Third, any attempt by the consortium to syndicate minority stakes to regional infrastructure funds, a tactic that would validate the $25 billion entry price and confirm whether other allocators view the deal as rationally priced or as peak-cycle aggression.
Jakarta issued its fourth AI-zone license three weeks ago. The consortium has six months to decide whether that timing was coincidence or clearance.