By Krystal Hu
(Reuters) -Swiss private investment company Partners Group Holding AG is investing up to $1.2 billion in U.S. data center operator EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure, the private equity firm told Reuters. Partners Group will use the fund to acquire a majority stake in EdgeCore and help it build out new data center sites across the United States, the latest of Partners' investment in data center assets. "We believe that the company is really well positioned to benefit from the growth in data traffic globally. Some of the themes include cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, 5G and mobile," said Ed Diffendal, managing director at Partners Group. In 2021, Partners Group made four digital infrastructure investments, including acquiring atNorth, the largest data center operator in Iceland. Data centers have become popular assets for infrastructure funds, as investors bet on companies shifting IT infrastructure to outsourced cloud service providers with data solutions. Led by former CoreSite chief executive Tom Ray, Denver-based EdgeCore had developed six data centers in the United States, including campuses in Phoenix, Arizona and the Silicon Valley. Backed by over $800 million of equity from Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, Canada's OPTrust pension fund and Mount Elbert Capital Partners, Edgecore says it has been serving large tech companies since its launch in 2018. Founded in 1996, Partners Group manages $131 billion across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, credit and secondaries globally. The infrastructure arm that invests in EdgeCore has $21 billion in assets under management.