Blackstone has acquired AirTrunk in a transaction that values the data centre giant and its vast project pipeline at $24 billion, finalising the largest M&A deal this year.

The asset management giant’s president, Jon Gray, said AirTrunk would be a big part of Blackstone’s push to become the largest investor in digital infrastructure in the world. Data centres have boomed in the last few years as major technology groups from Microsoft to Amazon have needed to secure more processing and storage capacity for increasingly complex artificial intelligence and cloud computing.