IPI Partners to Acquire Swiss Data Center Leader Safe Host

CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–IPI Partners, LLC (“IPI”), a global investment firm that specializes in investing in critical digital infrastructure assets, today announced it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Safe Host SA (“Safe Host”), a Switzerland-based data center owner and operator, from the founders, management, and funds managed by StepStone Real Estate (“SRE”), the real estate arm of global private markets investment firm StepStone Group Inc. (NASDAQ: STEP). Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2000, Safe Host is a leader in the Swiss data center market with an attractive portfolio of top-tier assets and relationships with leading hyperscale and enterprise clients. Safe Host operates four data centers in Geneva, Zurich, and Avenches, Switzerland and has additional land holdings in top European markets that offer meaningful growth potential.

Following the closing of the acquisition, Safe Host will operate under the STACK Infrastructure brand, which is sponsored by IPI and is one of the largest digital infrastructure platforms globally. When combined with STACK’s existing data center portfolio in Italy and the Nordics, the acquisition will provide incremental scale and geographic diversity, adding to STACK’s growing presence in Europe. The addition of Safe Host will also further bolster STACK’s ability to serve the unique needs of hyperscale and enterprise clients by pairing deep local and regional expertise with global reach and scale.

John Eland, CEO of STACK EMEA, commented, “We are excited to add the Safe Host portfolio to the STACK banner. Switzerland’s central location, political and economic stability, high standards for data protection, and renewable energy sources are highly attractive to our customer base, and we believe that the market is well positioned for increased hyperscale and enterprise growth moving forward.”

Matt A’Hearn, Partner at IPI, added, “Europe remains a high priority for IPI’s hyperscale customers, and Safe Host’s existing relationships and actionable expansion opportunities will accelerate our momentum in the region. IPI looks forward to further leveraging the strength of a unified STACK, expanded more broadly with this acquisition, to better serve customers and further build IPI’s hyperscale-focused data center portfolio.”

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP acted as legal advisor to IPI Partners. Latham & Watkins LLP acted as legal advisor, and RBC Capital Markets acted as financial advisor, to StepStone Real Estate.

About IPI Partners

IPI Partners specializes in acquiring, developing, leasing, and operating critical digital infrastructure assets to serve the needs of large, high-quality technology companies globally. Over the past five years, IPI has built one of the largest privately held hyperscale and enterprise data center portfolios in the world with facilities in the United States of America (eight of the top 10 markets), Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and Switzerland, with the ability to support over 1.4 Gigawatts of IT capacity.

About STACK Infrastructure

STACK provides digital infrastructure to scale the world’s most innovative companies. With a client-first approach, STACK delivers a comprehensive suite of campus, build-to-suit, colocation, and powered shell solutions in the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. With robust existing and flexible expansion capacity in the leading availability zones, STACK offers the scale and geographic reach that rapidly growing hyperscale and enterprise companies need. The world runs on data. And data runs on STACK.

About StepStone Group and StepStone Real Estate

StepStone Group Inc. (NASDAQ: STEP) is a global private markets investment firm focused on providing customized investment solutions and advisory and data services to its clients. As of December 31, 2021 StepStone oversaw approximately $548 billion of private markets allocations ($151 billion within SRE), including $127 billion of assets under management. StepStone’s clients include some of the world’s largest public and private defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies, as well as prominent endowments, foundations, family offices and private wealth clients, which include high-net-worth and mass affluent individuals. StepStone partners with its clients to develop and build private markets portfolios designed to meet their specific objectives across the real estate, private equity, infrastructure, and private debt asset classes.