CDC $1b hybrid raise follows 555MW AI data-centre deal

$1 billion is the amount now tied to Infratil-backed CDC Data Centres as bankers prepare a hybrid security sale after the operator signed a 30-year, 555-megawatt contract with an unnamed US customer. The Australian Financial Review reported the raising is expected to launch this week. The timing matters because CDC said on 6 May that the customer contract pushed contracted capacity above 1 gigawatt, turning the company’s expansion into a capital-markets story as well as an infrastructure one.

Infratil said the 555MW agreement sits within CDC’s current growth plan and can be funded through operating cash flow, debt markets and hybrid capital. That suggests management wants more balance-sheet flexibility before the new capacity starts producing cash, not after construction has run ahead of demand. With a 30-year customer commitment already in hand, the planned hybrid looks more like growth funding than a defensive refinance.

Scale explains the urgency. CDC said the agreement represented about 40 per cent of Australia’s operating data-centre capacity in 2025 and lifted its contracted book beyond 1GW.

Infratil also laid out the spending still ahead. The company said FY27 capital expenditure is expected to land between $3.8 billion and $4.2 billion, while EBITDAF is forecast at $680 million to $720 million. It said EBITDAF should exceed $1 billion in FY28 and reach an annualised run rate of about $2 billion once all contracted capacity is deployed. For investors, those figures describe a business still deep in build mode but with a clearer earnings base against which to raise hybrid capital.

The shareholder register gives the deal a wider audience. The AFR report said CDC’s owners include Infratil, the Future Fund and the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme. In an Infratil statement, founder and chief executive Greg Boorer said the customer win was “another massive tick of approval for Australia as a global hub for intelligence generation”.

Jason Boyes, Infratil’s chief executive, said the region’s stability, build costs and access to renewable energy were helping Australasia attract global computing capacity. The Financial Times wrote last week that power and data-centre assets are emerging as a key cost bottleneck in the AI build-out, while a Bloomberg Technology segment described Wall Street’s growing appetite for debt tied to data centres and GPU infrastructure. CDC’s planned hybrid sale fits that pattern because the capital raise follows the customer contract, not the other way around.

The comparison is not only theoretical. CNBC reported that Bloom Energy had partnered with Nebius in a $2.6 billion AI infrastructure deal in Europe, while InnovationAus reported on CSIRO’s push into edge infrastructure for local AI workloads. Investors still need CDC’s deal terms, including size, pricing and structure, but the broader point is already clear: Australia’s AI infrastructure boom is now large enough that the way data centres fund it has become a story of its own.