BOSTON, MA – Ascenty, a leading provider of data center and telecom services in Brazil, announced that it has closed on a significant equity investment led by Blackstone (NYSE: BX), with funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities group. This investment will help accelerate Ascenty’s growth plans, including the construction of additional data centers in Brazil and throughout Latin America.
Ascenty provides large-scale, high-density data center infrastructure to leading global technology firms. In addition, Ascenty operates a proprietary 4,000 km fiber network that interconnects its data centers with major telecom operators, third-party data centers and peering points throughout Brazil. “We are excited to have Blackstone as a new partner in the company to help us rapidly expand our growth opportunities. This new capital will allow us to expand not only in Brazil, but also in other Latin American countries,” said Chris Torto, Chief Executive Officer at Ascenty. “Latin America continues to be a vastly underserved market and our focus is to provide world-class data center infrastructure with outstanding customer service for companies looking to deploy in the region.”
"Blackstone is excited to partner with Ascenty and its majority shareholder, Great Hill Partners, to accelerate Ascenty’s growth and support its clients," said Jasvinder Khaira, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone Tactical Opportunities. "Chris and his team are extremely talented and our investment signals our confidence in their ability to expand their operations within Brazil and into new markets in Latin America.”
"Ascenty has been expanding at a tremendous pace, and we look forward to working closely with Blackstone to accelerate Ascenty’s expansion," said John Hayes, Managing Partner, Great Hill Partners.
Choate Hall & Stewart LLP acted as legal advisor to Ascenty and Great Hill Partners and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP acted as legal advisor to Blackstone. DH Capital served as exclusive financial advisor to Ascenty.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
About Ascenty
Ascenty is the largest data center provider in Brazil, with multiple data centers operating or currently under construction. The company was founded in 2010 and has focused on building world-class data centers while serving some of the largest global technology companies. All of the company’s data centers are interconnected using a proprietary 4,000 km fiber-optic network. For further information about Ascenty, please visit: www.ascenty.com.
About Great Hill Partners
Great Hill Partners is a private equity firm that has raised over $5 billion in commitments since inception to finance the expansion, recapitalization, or acquisition of growth companies in a wide range of sectors in business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries including software, financial and healthcare technology, digital media, eCommerce, and internet infrastructure. Great Hill targets investments of $25 million to $200 million.
About Blackstone
Blackstone is one of the world’s leading investment firms. We seek to create positive economic impact and long-term value for our investors, the companies in which we invest, and the communities in which we work. We do this by using extraordinary people and flexible capital to help companies solve problems. Our asset management businesses, with over $360 billion in assets under management, include investment vehicles focused on private equity, real estate, public debt and equity, non-investment grade credit, real assets and secondary funds, all on a global basis. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com. Follow Blackstone on Twitter @Blackstone.
