Safanad, a Dubai-based principal-led investment company that builds world-class businesses, has announced that it is accelerating the growth of its US digital infrastructure platform, Element Critical, through the launch of a new US data centre platform supported by $1 billion from top US institutional investment partners.

The new platform builds on Safanad’s success in establishing Element Critical as a rapidly expanding enterprise data centre operator and is anchored by the acquisition of two enterprise data centre facilities in Houston and Austin, Texas. 

It is designed to support continued expansion across the US to meet rising demand driven by AI inference, advanced digital workloads, and increasingly power-constrained environments, said the company in a statement.

Safanad has spent the past decade developing Element Critical into a leading enterprise-focused data centre platform serving customers across technology, financial services, healthcare, energy and other mission-critical sectors. 

The addition of substantial new long-term investment backing strengthens Safanad’s ability to accelerate data centre acquisitions, development, and expansion while continuing to scale Element Critical’s enterprise colocation footprint, it stated.

"We are proud to advance this next phase of Element Critical with partners who share our conviction in digital infrastructure and the evolution driven by AI," remarked Kamal Bahamdan, the Founder and CEO of Safanad. 

"Over the past decade, we have built Element Critical into a scaled, resilient platform, and this next phase meaningfully expands our capabilities in one of the world’s most critical infrastructure sectors," he noted.

 As digital infrastructure becomes an increasingly strategic priority in Saudi Arabia and across the Gulf, Safanad is also uniquely positioned to connect capital, operating expertise, and long-term partnerships across markets—enabling our investors and partners to participate in a sector that is central to the next phase of growth of the global digital economy," he added.

In parallel, Safanad has further strengthened its digital infrastructure capabilities with the appointment of Jeff Ferry as Partner and Head of Digital Infrastructure. 

Ferry brings more than 30 years of experience across digital infrastructure and data centre investing, including nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, and will work closely with Safanad and Element Critical to support the platform’s continued growth and execution.

For the transaction, Guggenheim Securities and Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisors to Safanad and King & Spalding acted as legal advisor. 

ABG Advisory served as strategic advisor to Safanad. Kirkland & Ellis acted as legal advisor to the platform in connection with acquisitions of the Houston and Austin data centers. BofA Securities and Citizens Bank served as Joint Lead Arrangers and Joint Bookrunners, and Huntington National Bank served as Joint Lead Arranger for the transaction financing.-TradeArabia News Service