“As part of the deal, Vantage’s APAC business could buy Yondr’s data centre campus in Johor in a transaction valued at about US$1.6 billion,” the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

“Other co-investors, including sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, are likely to join,” the people said.

“Deliberations are ongoing and no final decisions have been made,” the people said, adding that details such as valuation could still change.

Representatives for Boca Raton, Florida-based DigitalBridge, Vantage, Yondr and ADIA declined to comment.

Co-owned by DigitalBridge and La Caisse, Yondr operates as an independent company within DigitalBridge’s portfolio.

Vantage runs data centres for large-scale cloud-computing providers, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology firms, according to its website.

Its APAC headquarters are in Singapore, and it has locations in Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.

DigitalBridge and Vantage already have close ties.

The former, along with Silver Lake Management, led a US$6.4 billion equity investment into Vantage last year that followed a €1.5 billion (US$1.7 billion) investment from AustralianSuper for Vantage’s Europe, Middle East and Africa operations.

Demand for AI and other data-intensive technologies is driving a wave of investment.

In July, Stonepeak Partners agreed to invest US$1.3 billion in data centre operator Princeton Digital Group to help its expansion across APAC.

Meanwhile, the China data centre business owned by Bain Capital’s Chindata Group Holdings Ltd has drawn interest from local bidders in a potential deal valued at ¥30 billion (US$4.2 billion).

Bloomberg News reported in August that DigitalBridge was considering raising as much as US$1 billion through a stake sale in Vantage’s APAC business.

“It also considered offloading its assets in Hong Kong for as much as US$500 million,” people familiar with the matter said last year.