The Carlyle Group is offloading a data center power-focused portfolio company to Swedish private equity firm EQT for $2.6 billion, netting a roughly fivefold return on its original investment.

The deal, which surfaced via a Financial Times report, represents one of the cleaner private equity exits in the infrastructure space this year.

Why power infrastructure is the hottest trade in town

Carlyle acquired Involta, now rebranded as Ark Data Centers, back in early 2022, well before the generative AI frenzy sent every hyperscaler scrambling for megawatts.

EQT already owns EdgeConneX, a significant data center platform, and has been actively pursuing gas supply and microgrid projects tied to powering compute facilities. Adding Carlyle’s power-focused unit gives EQT a deeper bench in exactly the resource that every cloud provider, AI lab, and enterprise customer is fighting over.

The crypto connection: competing for the same megawatts

No blockchain or cryptocurrency elements were directly involved in this transaction.

Bitcoin miners and data center operators are increasingly competing for the same finite resource: cheap, reliable electricity. Major Bitcoin mining companies like Core Scientific have pivoted toward AI and high-performance computing hosting precisely because the economics of selling power access to AI customers can be more attractive than mining Bitcoin.

What this means for investors watching the energy-infrastructure boom

For EQT, the acquisition deepens its infrastructure platform at a time when sustainable energy solutions and microgrid developments are becoming essential components of new data center builds.

The risk is that this level of enthusiasm eventually produces overbuilding. Private equity firms chasing the next fivefold return might fund more power capacity than the market actually needs in a downturn scenario.