The Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division is forming a global data center infrastructure platform.

The division is partnering with long-time data center industry executive Scott Peterson and a seasoned management team to launch Global Compute Infrastructure. It initially committed to fund up to $500 million of equity capital, primarily from its infrastructure fund, West Street Infrastructure Partners III, LP, to enable approximately $1.5 billion in near-term investments deployed across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. 

Goldman Sachs says Global Compute intends to grow through a combination of acquisitions and organic development to serve customers in geographies with strong tailwinds and potential for significant data infrastructure growth. Global Compute will target the acquisition and development facilities that can meet the growing compute, storage, connectivity and colocation deployment needs of the world's largest technology companies.