American Real Estate Partners (AREP) has closed a new real estate fund focused on data center investments.
AREP, an institutional real estate fund manager and operating company, this week announced the closing of its fourth real estate GP fund, AREP Strategic Opportunity Fund IV with $309 million in equity commitments.
The company’s largest fund to date, around 80 percent of Fund IV is being allocated to expanding AREP’s data center platform, PowerHouse, which has data centers in development across the US. Fund III closed in 2022.
“This $309 million raise signals both tremendous growth and a bold shift in AREP’s capacity to scale and lead,” said AREP president and co-founder, Brian Katz. “The pivot into data centers and digital infrastructure is the result of our team’s deliberate, long-term strategy to invest in sectors that drive tomorrow’s economy. Our approach didn’t just follow industry trends – it helped reshape them.”
He continued: ”From data centers powering the digital landscape to modern, high-demand residential communities, we’ve consistently anticipated where the market is headed. We expect Fund IV to build on this momentum, enabling us to pursue even larger, transformational assets for our investors.”
Founded in 2003, AREP is an institutional fund manager and real estate firm with more than $13 billion in gross assets deployed across the US. Specializing in data center, residential, industrial, and office assets, AREP has acquired more than 34 million square feet of real estate, and is currently managing more than 25 million square feet of built space.
Founded in 2022, PowerHouse is a wholly-owned division of American Real Estate Partners and has around 5.9GW of capacity either planned or under construction in Northern Virginia, Virginia, Texas, and North Carolina.
In August last year, PowerHouse announced a $5 billion joint venture along with Blue Owl Capital and Chirisa Technology Parks to develop build-to-suit AI/HPC data center developments supporting CoreWeave and other hyperscale and enterprise data center customers. As well as Richmond, Virginia, the JV was set to develop brownfield and greenfield campuses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Kentucky, and Nevada.
