AirTrunk pays staff bonuses totalling $22m after blockbuster deal with Blackstone

A data centre operator has handed $22m in bonuses to its 330 staff – about $65,000 per worker – after a blockbuster of a year.

AirTrunk founder and chief executive Robin Khuda flew almost his entire workforce to a team building conference in Bali earlier this year.

Data centre operator AirTrunk has awarded its 330 employees bonuses totalling about $22m – about $65,000 per worker – ahead of its blockbuster deal with US private equity titan Blackstone this month.

Blackstone has acquired AirTrunk for $24bn – more than eight times what it was worth when Macquarie Asset Management and PSP Investments bought into the business in 2020.

The deal catapulted AirTrunk founder and chief executive Robin Khuda into the nation’s wealthy elite. Mr Khuda is known for his generosity – he flew most of AirTrunk’s workforce to its conference in Bali earlier this year, where activities included assembling a pushbike for charity to help improve strategic thinking and foster collaboration.

The bonuses are in addition to any other annual bonuses AirTrunk staff are eligible to receive and a profit-sharing agreement with more than 100 of the company’s senior employees.

Robin Khuda, AirTrunk Founder and CEO, is known for his generosity. Picture: Britta Campion

Mr Khuda told The Australian he planned to grow AirTrunk into a $100bn business, citing investments in cloud infrastructure totalling $1 trillion by its customers, which include Microsoft, Amazon and Google, as they jostle for pole position in the artificial intelligence boom.

AirTrunk has also clinched a number of renewable energy deals, which Mr Khuda said appealed to its big tech customers as they attempt to make themselves greener and more sustainable.

“We’ve always been ambitious,” Mr Khuda told The Australian after signing the deal with Blackstone in September.

“Of course we got the benefit of Covid, which accelerated the migration to the cloud. Now with AI there’s a significant amount of growth coming up, so we were at the right place and right time in terms of going through this big structural change in our industry.

“They used to say if you buy IBM, you’re never going to lose your job. And the same thing applies to AirTrunk. Our customers know ‘if we sign up with you, we know you are going to deliver on time, (provide) good quality’. There’s a lot of value to it. That’s why we’ve been winning bigger market share than anyone else, not only in Australia but Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and all those markets.”

Mr Khuda said it was “not that difficult” to elevate AirTrunk to a $100bn business.

“We’re $24bn. We only have to grow four times, pretty much, to get to that level,” he said.

“If you look at the growth, it’s really four or five customers – it’s Microsoft, it’s Google, it’s Amazon, it’s Oracle. And if you’re not doing business with these customers, your business model doesn’t exist. That’s the reality.

“Between them, they’re looking to deploy $US200bn in new investment in cloud infrastructure just this year. If you extrapolate the next four or five years, there’s a $1 trillion investment. This company (AirTrunk) is going to support their growth.”

AirTrunk is edging closer to achieving net zero emissions by the end of the decade after striking a deal last month to install a 1MW rooftop solar system at its flagship Malaysian data centre.

The centre, at Johor Bahru on Malaysia’s southern tip, opened in July and was hailed as an “artificial intelligence-ready” facility, with its initial phases capable of providing more than 50MW of capacity to its big tech customers.

Mr Khuda believes renewable energy is a better option to achieve net zero emissions than nuclear energy, as it can be deployed more quickly and cheaply.

AirTrunk also has a virtual power purchase power agreement to buy energy from a 30MW solar farm that is currently being developed by ib vogt under Malaysia’s Corporate Green Power Program.

AirTrunk and other big data centre operators, including Amazon, CDC, Microsoft and NextDC have been quick to highlight their sustainability credentials following criticism they are exacerbating climate change, given the amount of power and water data centres consume.

The companies say data centres are a “crucial component of Australia’s digital infrastructure”, supporting connectivity, from internet use to emergency response and disease surveillance, and consume about 1 per cent of Australia’s annual electricity usage. This compares with metal manufacturing accounting for 14 per cent of electricity use.