Blackstone Inc.’s acquisition of data center operator AirTrunk will catapult founder Robin Khuda into a rarefied club of self-made superrich.
The world’s largest alternative-asset manager said Wednesday that it had agreed to buy the Australian firm, valuing it at A$24 billion ($16.1 billion), including debt and capital expenditure for committed projects.
Khuda owned around 10% of the company, according to the Australian Financial Review. Based on the latest deal valuation, his stake may be worth as much as A$1 billion ($672 million), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
It’s unclear how much of his stake he sold as part of the deal.
AirTrunk declined to comment on Khuda’s wealth and the size of his stake.
New York-based Blackstone, along with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, is buying AirTrunk from Macquarie Group Ltd. and PSP Investments, according to a statement Wednesday. The acquisition is Blackstone’s biggest-ever investment in the Asia-Pacific region.
Khuda, who is in his 40s, arrived in Australia as an 18-year-old from Bangladesh, founded AirTrunk in 2015 and landed his first contract to construct a data center a year later.
He had to overcome financial hardship before finding success. Struggling to fund the company’s early operations, he dipped into his personal pension savings and even considered getting insolvency advice, according to comments he made at the AFR Business Summit’s annual dinner this year.
Ultimately, his belief in the insatiable demand for cloud computing and data storage paid off. He raised A$400 million in 2017, according to AFR, allowing AirTrunk to build data centers in Melbourne and Sydney, with backing from Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s special-situations group.
Three years later, a consortium led by Macquarie’s infrastructure arm took control of the firm in a deal that valued AirTrunk at about A$3 billion.
AirTrunk operates data centers in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia, according to its website.