Macquarie Capital invests in Zerra to support Asia-Pacific expansion

Zerra is a fully integrated hyperscale data centre developer and operator serving leading cloud and AI businesses across Asia-Pacific. Established by global real assets investor and manager AGP, Zerra has been built over several years by its founding team, bringing together specialist expertise to develop and operate large-scale data centre projects. Zerra’s current development pipeline comprises more than 2GW of planned IT capacity across Australia, Japan and India. The investment by Macquarie Capital provides Zerra with funding to continue to develop its portfolio across the region, capitalising on the growing customer demand across Asia-Pacific, with AGP remaining Zerra’s majority shareholder.

The investment builds on Macquarie Capital’s existing relationship with Zerra at Western Downs Digital Park (WDDP) in Queensland. Zerra is developing and will operate the campus, with Macquarie Capital participating as a consortium partner and acting as project and financial adviser. WDDP is one of Australia’s largest digital infrastructure projects and recently has secured a long-term lease agreement with global frontier AI lab, Anthropic.

Kristian Steffensen, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Zerra, said: “Macquarie Capital’s investment in Zerra is a significant milestone for our team and the business. Our ambition is to be the infrastructure partner of choice for the world’s fastest-scaling technology businesses.

“Our customers are making substantial, long-term commitments to infrastructure. They need partners who can bring together the sites, power, delivery capability and operational expertise to support them over decades.
“Macquarie Capital brings significant experience in backing and growing digital infrastructure businesses and its investment will help us strengthen our delivery and operating capabilities across our projects in Australia, Japan and India.”

Ivan Varughese, Head of Macquarie Capital Infrastructure Principal, Asia Pacific, said: “The growth of AI and cloud services is driving demand for larger, well-planned and sustainable data centre campuses across Asia-Pacific. Meeting that demand requires teams that can bring together communities, customers, power and development capability at scale. Zerra has assembled an impressive team and a high-quality project pipeline in several key data centre markets.

“Over its 20-year investment history, Macquarie Capital has developed deep expertise in renewable energy development in Zerra’s key markets, focused on the intersection of power and sustainability. This development expertise makes Macquarie Capital an ideal partner to support Zerra as it scales across the region.”

Dave Cooper, CEO of Zerra, said: “Responsible development means addressing energy efficiency, water use and community needs from the outset. Our current campus designs across Australia, Japan and India use air-cooled technology to minimise reliance on water-based evaporative cooling, typically one of the largest sources of water consumption in traditional data centres.

“Water use in these designs is primarily for the day-to-day needs of on-site workers. We further reduce demand for fresh water through solutions tailored to each location, including treated grey water recycling, and rainwater capture and storage.

“We also want our campuses to make a lasting contribution to the communities around them. That means working closely with local communities and creating opportunities through local employment, apprenticeships, partnerships with education and training providers, and dedicated community benefit programs.”

Macquarie Capital’s Infrastructure Principal team invests catalytic capital in early-stage companies and projects across the digital infrastructure ecosystem, partnering with corporates, developers and operators to support the growth of critical infrastructure required to meet accelerating AI, cloud and enterprise demand. The team brings expertise across the full asset lifecycle, from development and construction through to operational scale-up. It recently supported the growth of Prime Data Centres from a single US data centre asset to a global platform with more than 1.3GW of secured power across 14 campuses.

Macquarie Capital is also a lead investor in KelvinX, a pan-European data centre platform. This is Macquarie Capital Principal Investment’s fifth investment since April and is its twelfth digital infrastructure investment overall.

Grant Samuel acted as financial adviser to Zerra on the transaction.

About Zerra
Zerra is a hyperscale data centre platform established to develop and ultimately operate campuses across Asia-Pacific. Backed by AGP and Macquarie Capital, Zerra combines development, energy, design, construction and operational expertise to serve cloud and AI customers.

The business has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul and Mumbai. Its current and near-term development pipeline comprises more than 2GW of planned IT capacity across Australia, Japan and India, including Western Downs Digital Park in Queensland, Campbellfield in Melbourne, and campuses in Inzai in the Tokyo region and Navi Mumbai. For more information, visit Zerra’s website.

About Macquarie Capital
Macquarie Capital is the advisory, capital markets and principal investment arm of Macquarie Group. It encompasses corporate advisory, a full spectrum of capital solutions, including capital raising services from equity, debt and private capital markets and principal investments from Macquarie’s balance sheet. Macquarie Capital has deep sector expertise in the aerospace, defence and government services, consumer, gaming and leisure, critical minerals, energy, financial institutions, healthcare, industrials, infrastructure, real estate, services, software, technology, telecommunications and media sectors. For more information, visit Macquarie Capital’s website.

About AGP
AGP is an independent global investor and manager that finances, develops and operates sustainable real assets across energy, digital and real estate. The company was founded in 2018 and has over 3.1GW of secured data centre capacity and 11.8GW of clean energy assets operating or under development globally.
AGP incubates platforms with deep development expertise to build future-proof assets. AGP brings capital and global expertise to create these opportunities and partners with investors as they scale. For more information, visit AGP’s website.

Media Contacts

Zerra and AGP
Caroline Streeter
GRA Cosway
+61 402 170 901

Macquarie Capital
Nicole Smee
Macquarie Group Media Relations
+61 437 585 855