Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust filed Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise as much as $1.75 billion in a U.S. initial public offering, with shares priced at $20 each.
The trust is set up as a real estate investment trust and aims to buy stabilized, tenant-occupied data centers valued between $250 million and $1.5 billion. It focuses on properties with tenants who have investment-grade credit ratings and are large-scale operators. Reuters reports the trust has identified $25 billion in potential deals in places like Northern Virginia, Ohio, Phoenix, Maryland, and Austin.
As an added incentive, the trust is giving IPO participants extra shares amounting to 1% of their total investment, with any fractional shares dropped to the next whole number. According to the filing, a related Blackstone entity has expressed intent to participate in the IPO for up to $200 million worth of shares, with that figure reduced by the value of any bonus shares allocated.
Day-to-day management of the trust will rest with an affiliated Blackstone entity compensated through a combination of base and performance-based fees. The trust is also positioned ahead of other Blackstone-managed funds when it comes to acquiring data centers that the firm originates.
“With an estimated $1 trillion total addressable stabilized data center market expected over the next five years, we believe the industry represents a substantial investment opportunity,” the company said in its filing.
The IPO reflects two priorities for Blackstone, which manages $1.3 trillion in assets: establishing itself as a major investor in AI infrastructure and expanding its investor base beyond institutional clients such as pensions and endowments. Reuters noted that Blackstone has invested over $150 billion in data center assets since 2018.
The offering connects to Blackstone’s broader data center push. The firm was part of a deal in which Related Digital and Blackstone secured $16 billion in financing for a data center campus in Saline Township, Michigan, built for Oracle. Blackstone contributed about $2 billion in equity to that project, according to Bloomberg.
The underwriting syndicate includes Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Canada, and Wells Fargo as joint lead book-running managers. Once listed, the trust’s shares will trade on the NYSE under the ticker BXDC.
