Legal & General has taken a 50% stake in the £230m Kao Data Campus development in the London-Cambridge corridor in an investment that “combines digital tech with a traditional infrastructure asset”.
The data centre, which will serve data and life sciences businesses along the innovation corridor, was named in honour of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sir Charles Kao, who pioneered the use of fibre optics at the site of Kao’s first data campus development.
Legal & General has partnered with Goldacre Noé Group to expand the data centre in a deal that follows hot on the heels of Legal & General Capital’s investment in tech company WiredScore in October last year.
Speaking exclusively to EG, Matteo Colombo, director of strategic private capital investments at Legal & General Capital, said: “We are trying to invest across tech and real estate through innovative investing. WiredScore was a tech investment in a company that works with real assets. This investment in Kao is more of a physical investment – it is basically a super-high-tech fridge.
“90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years. This amount will grow exponentially going forward, and all of this data needs storing in a physical location – data centres will become a key element of our infrastructure.”
David Bloom, founder of Goldacre, said: “When you look at the data centre industry across Europe, London is far and away one of the largest markets. The future of digital growth comes down to the network, so the future for us is certainly to expand further. There will be more developments and more sites – that’s our business plan over the next five to 10 years.”
Colombo added: “This is one of the fastest-growing areas. We want to provide digital infrastructure across the whole of the country.”
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