The Carlyle Group is offloading a data center power-focused portfolio company to Swedish private equity firm EQT for $2.6 billion, netting a roughly fivefold return on its original investment.
The deal, which surfaced via a Financial Times report, represents one of the cleaner private equity exits in the infrastructure space this year.
Why power infrastructure is the hottest trade in town
Carlyle acquired Involta, now rebranded as Ark Data Centers, back in early 2022, well before the generative AI frenzy sent every hyperscaler scrambling for megawatts.
EQT already owns EdgeConneX, a significant data center platform, and has been actively pursuing gas supply and microgrid projects tied to powering compute facilities. Adding Carlyle’s power-focused unit gives EQT a deeper bench in exactly the resource that every cloud provider, AI lab, and enterprise customer is fighting over.
