US infrastructure investor I Squared Capital has struck an agreement to invest as much as $2 billion in real estate and infrastructure assets owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and companies within its portfolio.
Under the partnership, PIF and I Squared will jointly identify investment opportunities across the sovereign wealth fund’s holdings, initially focusing on digital infrastructure and district cooling businesses. I Squared has committed up to $1 billion for each of the two sectors, with scope to expand the partnership into additional related areas over time.
The two organisations said the arrangement is designed to speed up project execution while increasing the amount of third-party capital flowing into PIF-backed assets.
I Squared Capital is an independent infrastructure investment firm with holdings spanning sectors including energy, utilities, transport and logistics, and digital infrastructure.
The agreement comes as PIF, which oversees assets of almost $1.15 trillion, continues to channel significant investment into Saudi Arabia’s digital infrastructure ambitions, particularly data centres.
In May, Reuters reported that Humain, the PIF-backed artificial intelligence company, had appointed Goldman Sachs to advise on a financing package worth 20 billion riyals ($5.3 billion) to support the development of data centre capacity across the kingdom.
The combination of district cooling systems with data centre projects is becoming an increasingly important element of digital infrastructure development across the Gulf, as regional governments invest heavily in technology platforms to support economic diversification strategies.