Cologix Closes $525 Million USD Asset-Backed Securitization to Support AI Infrastructure, Interconnection and Growth

Cologix Inc., an active network-neutral interconnection and hyperscale edge data center company in North America, announced that it has closed a $525 million USD asset-backed securitization (ABS) to support the company’s continued growth in digital infrastructure. The secured notes are backed by Cologix’s COL4 data center in Columbus, Ohio, and structured with a 5-year fixed term.

This transaction marks Cologix’s fourth ABS issuance since 2021 and reflects the company’s continued use of the asset-backed securities market to fund growth. Proceeds will support strategic investments across the company’s Scalelogix and Digital Edge portfolio, enabling the company to address increasing demand for inference AI and cloud workloads.

“This transaction demonstrates the strength of our balance sheet, the continued support of our investor base and the market’s confidence in our long-term strategy,” said Scott Schneider, CFO, Cologix. “As we kick off our next wave of growth, this financing will help us scale critical infrastructure to meet the increasing demands of hyperscale and inference AI applications.”

Cologix continues to expand its hyperscale edge footprint across North America, helping customers deploy cloud and AI-ready digital infrastructure at the network edge. This latest ABS financing follows three prior transactions in 2021, 2022 and 2023, further supporting the company’s ability to scale critical infrastructure with speed and confidence.

“Our ability to deliver scalable, sustainable and deeply connected data center solutions is a key driver of customer success,” said Laura Ortman, CEO, Cologix. “This financing ensures we’re well-positioned to meet the needs of cloud providers, enterprise and AI customers seeking reliable, high-density interconnection at the edge.”

Cologix continues to prioritize operational sustainability in its growth strategy, maintaining average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) rates that outperform industry benchmarks. These efficiency measures reflect the company’s commitment to responsible digital infrastructure development while scaling to meet future needs.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. served as the lead bank on the transaction and legal counsel was provided by King & Spalding.

Comments

Founded in 2010, Cologix has raised a total of $2.5 billion in debt and funding in just 4 rounds, illustrating the domain appetite, being very capital intensive. Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, a PE firm, has acquired majority of interest in 2017.

Data centers became a hot business with internet boom at different moments, with different social media activities and other online or SaaS applications or even gaming but what we live for a few years with AI is a real tsunami. Just realize the volume of data created, stored, processed, copied... and you get an idea but the multiple, the growing factor, is crazy. It explains the boom in the data centers business and the money trajectory that followed the AI demand.

We have all famous data centers names and providers in mind, local, regional, national, global and giant. Of course hyperscalers play a key role in the domain for their own usage, and it is a real battle in that area. We also see obviously lots of colocations due to the levels of investment needed, GPU-as-a-Service players, pretty hot as well, securing space, data centers, GPUs and money. And to name a few key sites or regions, Northern Virginia appears to be the US capital for data center with more than 300 facilities, and then we found Phoenix, silicon valley, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington DC, New-York with the tri-state area, Miami and LA.

In a recent study published by CBRE and the previous one, we found that 2024 has been the most dynamic year in terms of number of data centers built but also by the filling of them. This market dynamism puts the pressure on various key elements such as the pricing of the soil, equipments pricing, critical resources scarcity, power generator and cooling systems among others. We also read in that report the use of new source of energy going in the "right" direction.