Khuda’s plan to turn AirTrunk into a $100b-plus company
AirTrunk founder Robin Khuda says the data centre giant is on the way to becoming a $100 billion-plus company because it takes an on-the-ground approach to building an offshore business, which creates close relationships with fast-moving customers and opens up opportunities for growth.
Still beaming from orchestrating Australia’s biggest deal of 2024 – selling AirTrunk for $24 billion to Blackstone in September – Mr Khuda said on Wednesday that the company had succeeded where others had failed by establishing teams throughout the Asia Pacific and investing heavily in local economies.
“We invested day one locally. We invested in people, we invested in relationships with utility companies, the government, regulatory bodies, etcetera, and I think over time that has resulted in a successful AirTrunk,” said Mr Khuda, who was named a joint winner of The Australian Financial Review Business Person of the Year, alongside the founders of Chemist Warehouse, at The Fullerton Hotel ballroom in Sydney’s Martin Place on Wednesday night.
“Lots of Australian businesses, they try to run Asia from here, and it’s not the same. It’s very different. Doing business in Tokyo, it’s very different to doing business in Osaka, for example.
“The reality is our customers are changing their forecasts every week. We want to be a $100 billion business or even more, so we need to make sure we don’t drop the ball and make sure we’re ready.”
AirTrunk has provided the most investment into Malaysia by an Australian company since 2020. It is also the second-largest Australian company investor in Hong Kong in that period, the seventh-largest in Japan and the eleventh-largest in Singapore.
That has allowed AirTrunk to become the largest data centre operator in Asia, outside China. It has built 11 data centres across Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore while being at the cutting edge of building data centres for hyperscalers – the world’s biggest cloud computing providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Stephen Schwarzman’s advice
Having Blackstone as a backer, AirTrunk will lean deeper into that approach by spending $12 billion over the next 12 months, with most of that capital expected to be deployed into Asian countries. Mr Khuda is eyeing expansion into India, South Korea and Indonesia, and plans to open five more data centres.
But even that $12 billion was just the beginning. The AirTrunk founder envisions “investing hundreds of billions of dollars” into more Asia-Pacific jurisdictions because there is plenty of appetite for data centre investment.
That belief was bolstered following a recent lunch with his now-mentor, Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, in New York, who “started talking about big cloud customers, tens of billions of dollars of deals where you need big pockets and how AirTrunk can be a much bigger player in the Asia-Pacific region”.
Mr Khuda added that having Blackstone’s name behind AirTrunk would provide more opportunities to spend, noting that the private equity firm was India’s largest foreign investor.
In Australia alone, the burgeoning data centre market is set to nearly double to $40 billion over the next four years as companies invest big in AI platforms, according to CBRE analysis. In Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, data centre capacities are expected to more than double by 2026.
“If we look at the AI, the top four AI companies – Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle – are investing trillions of dollars into AI and into data centres. If you don’t have the balance sheet, you’re not going to be able to service their demand,” Mr Khuda said.
“That’s one of the reasons why we went to Blackstone, who has supported us very strongly. We’re talking about investing hundreds of billions of dollars, and there are few companies that can support that sort of capital.”
