Starwood Capital Group Launches Digital Ventures Arm

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jan 22, 2024

Starwood Capital Group – a leading global private investment firm focused on real estate – recently announced the launch of Starwood Digital Ventures, a platform dedicated to the firm’s growing global data center investment strategy.

In the past five years, Starwood Capital has committed approximately $8 billion in data center development, encompassing 1.5 gigawatts in various stages of development, making it one of the largest privately held data center developers in the United States and Europe. Starwood Digital Ventures will utilize funds from various Starwood Investment Vehicles to continue to develop its pipeline and partner with sophisticated data center operators.

In connection with this announcement, Starwood Capital also announced that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Worldwide Mission Critical, an industry-leading consulting firm with deep expertise in assisting clients with the design and development of data center projects. Worldwide Mission Critical provides services ranging from design management, bidding and procurement, construction quality control, and integrated testing for data center projects. The firm has partnered with Starwood Capital on several projects over the past five years. The strategic alliance will allow Starwood Capital to scale its data center platform to support anticipated growth quickly.

KEY QUOTES:

“We are incredibly excited about the launch of Starwood Digital, which will provide us with additional opportunities to grow our data center portfolio amidst strong industry tailwinds. With the strong demand for data center services in the United States and growing needs to support end uses such as artificial intelligence, we see continued opportunity to invest in this growing sector.”

– Barry Sternlicht, Chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital

“In addition, we have worked closely with Worldwide Mission Critical the last several years and look forward to deepening our relationship with the industry experts there, who have become valued partners of ours, as we leverage their skills and strong industry reputation to expand our data center investments both domestically and abroad generating compelling value for our investors.”

– Anthony Balestrieri, Managing Director at Starwood Capital