Digital Realty stock falls; $3.5 billion stake in Blackstone data centers
A Digital Realty data center in Sterling, Virginia, United States, on Sunday, May 31, 2026.
Lexi Critchett | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Digital Real Estate Premarket trading fell after the asset manager announced it was buying a $3.5 billion stake in three data centers Karataş.
The Austin-based global data center firm said Monday it will pay $1.2 billion in cash and $2.3 billion in stock for data centers in Northern Virginia valued at $7.8 billion. The transaction is expected to be completed on Tuesday.
Digital Realty will acquire Blackstone’s 80% interest in two 96-megawatt data centers in Manassas, Virginia, and a 50% interest in a 96-megawatt data center in Sterling, Virginia.
It was last trading down 5.4% before the market opened. The stock is up 23% year-to-date.
Digital Realty shares in the past year.
The first two data centers are expected to stabilize in the first half of 2027, and the third in the first half of 2028.
Greg Wright, Digital Realty’s chief investment officer, said the transaction reflects the next phase of Digital Realty’s partnership with Blackstone.
This allows the company to increase its ownership in a portfolio of “fully leased, high-quality hyperscale assets” that expands its growth path and expands its product pipeline for the continued expansion of its strategic private equity platform, it added in a statement on Monday.
Digital Realty is looking to increase its presence in the industry in Virginia, long considered the world’s largest data center market.
Texas was close to beating Virginia’s data center reign, real estate firm says in February report JLL to create.
Additionally, 92% of data center capacity currently under construction in North America is already allocated, signaling that vacancies will remain low until at least 2030, according to JLL.
Spending is driven by large hyperscalers including: Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, And Google, Those who have committed to a total investment expenditure of nearly 700 billion dollars this year for the construction of artificial intelligence infrastructures.
Big tech, meanwhile, is increasingly relying on private equity, private credit and debt to finance these developments, with deals consistently rising above $10 billion last year, according to data from Preqin.
