Kirkland & Ellis is advising GIC on a circa $15 billion joint venture (JV) with Equinix, Inc. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) to capitalise, acquire and develop a U.S. centric digital infrastructure platform. Driven by increasing artificial intelligence and cloud growth, the JV is intended to accelerate the Equinix xScale data center portfolio by purchasing land to build new state-of-the-art xScale facilities on multiple greater-than-100-megawatt campuses in the U.S., eventually adding more than 1.5 gigawatts of new capacity for hyperscale customers. Under the terms of the agreement, CPP Investments and GIC will each control a 37.5% equity interest in the JV, and Equinix will own a 25% equity interest. The closing of the JV is subject to the receipt of required regulatory approvals, which are expected to be received in the fourth quarter of 2024. Read GIC’s press release The Kirkland team is led by corporate lawyers Celyn Evans, Miroslav Tomo, Matthew Elliott, James Hunn, Shaun Chung and Isabel Lee; real estate lawyers Christopher Hartmann, Samuel Zaretsky and Brandon Hemans; and tax lawyers Justin Barbosa, Mike Beinus and Callum Burnett.