Digital Realty Expands Northern Virginia Control

The story now adds a new AI-infrastructure angle: Digital Realty is explicitly tying its portfolio to programmable infrastructure through a ServiceFabric initiative, alongside the earlier ownership and capacity expansion themes. The rest of the update largely confirms the same Northern Virginia, Kansas City, and AI-cooling narrative with slightly broader framing.

The story now extends beyond the Virginia stake buyout to show Digital Realty actively financing and scaling a much larger AI/data-center expansion pipeline, especially in Kansas City and at Digital Dulles. The updated framing also sharpens the operational constraints around that growth, emphasizing power, cooling, water, and community acceptance as central execution risks.

• $2.28 billion equity raise to fund expansion
• 1,440-acre Kansas City land acquisition for up to 2 GW
• Digital Dulles could reach 13 data centers and $10 billion
• Closed-loop cooling and backup generation were highlighted on tours
• Concerns about grid demand, water, emissions, and public access intensified

The story has broadened from a single Blackstone buyback deal into a wider pattern of Digital Realty consolidating hyperscale assets while actively funding and expanding its AI/data-center platform. The new emphasis is on capital raising, land acquisition, and the physical infrastructure constraints behind future growth.

• Digital Realty is raising capital alongside the data-center buyout.
• Digital Realty acquired land in the Kansas City area for hyperscale growth.
• Operational constraints like cooling, backup power, substations, and water are now highlighted.
• Realty Income is newly identified as an institutional hyperscale investor.
• Barclays and Nvidia appear as new actors in the expanded story.

Digital Realty agreed to buy back Blackstone-held stakes in three fully leased Northern Virginia data centers, raising its ownership to 100% across 288 MW of IT capacity. The $3.5 billion transaction is structured with cash and stock and is tied to assets that are already leased to investment-grade hyperscale customers on long-term contracts. It matters because it gives Digital Realty more direct control of a major capacity portfolio in the industry’s most important U.S. data center market while preserving expected revenue growth as the sites stabilize through 2028.