The Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) will invest C$225m (US$160m) in an expansion of a Canadian data center.

This amount represents 50 percent of the total C$450m (US$320m) construction loan. The remaining 50 percent is made up by Deutsche Bank Private Credit and Infrastructure, which served as lead lender on the transaction.

The facility will be developed as a joint venture between vertically integrated data center development and investment platform Related Digital, investment firm Towerbrook Capital Partners, and Canadian data center operator Ascent.

According to the CPP Investments press release, the expansion will add an additional 54MW to a data center in Cambridge, Ontario. But a separate press release issued by Related Digital in March of this year about a data center project also located in Cambridge, Ontario, stated that 64MW of capacity would be available upon completion.

DCD has reached out to both for clarification.

The facility has been pre-leased to an unknown hyperscaler described as a “market-leading GPU-focused AI cloud compute provider.”

CPP Investment’s head of real assets credit, Geoffrey Souter, said: “The rapid expansion of digital infrastructure—driven by accelerating demand for cloud services, data storage, and the transformative potential of artificial intelligence—is fueling strong growth in data center development.”

CPP Investments made its first direct data center investment in 2017. Last November, it invested KRW 1 trillion (US$711m) in a joint venture with Pacific Asset Management Company to develop hyperscale data centers in South Korea, adding to an existing portfolio of joint ventures and investments across Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the US, and Canada.

Deutsche Bank has been active in the data center industry. Last month, it led debt financing for an $835m investment in Canadian data center group 5C and underwrote a AU$1.3bn (US$856m) green financing facility for a hyperscale campus in Melbourne, Australia.

Related Digital was launched as the data center arm of US real estate company Related Companies in March of this year. It claims a near-term $45bn development pipeline totaling 5GW across the US and Canada.

Ascent was acquired by American logistics, distribution, and supply chain solutions company Wesco in November 2024 for $185m.