I Squared Capital bought 10 AI data centres from Cogent Fibre for USD 225 million in cash. This marks its latest move into digital infrastructure.
The investment manager said the assets would seed a new U.S. data centre operating platform. It also committed USD 1 billion for upgrades, expansions and acquisitions.
The deal covers nine U.S. markets, including Chicago, Atlanta and Houston. The facilities include about 53 megawatts of power capacity and 259,000 square feet of colocation space.
I Squared said the acquisition reflects growing demand for data centres closer to end users. This demand comes as AI workloads shift from model training to inference. The company described inference as the “doing” phase of artificial intelligence, while training was described as “learning.”
Gautam Bhandari, co-founder and managing partner at I Squared Capital, said location, power and connectivity determine the long-term value of data centres. He said the acquired facilities have all three. Also, the facilities are in markets where new supply is constrained.
Read: Meta Hyperion Data Center Reshapes Louisiana Parish
Cogent Fiber is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Cogent Communications Holdings. The source said Cogent Communications shares have fallen nearly 16% in 2026.
I Squared also agreed last month to acquire a majority stake in Elea, one of Brazil’s largest carrier-neutral data centre platforms.
