Investment manager GLP has closed its first digital infrastructure-focused strategy with 2.6 billion yuan ( US$357.71 million ) in assets under management.

Backed by a group of China-based and international institutional investors, GLP China IDC Income Fund I marks a key milestone for GLP in a fast-growing new-economy asset class which has been one of its strategic focus areas since 2018, the company says.

Drawing from its logistics industry playbook, GLP has built a vertically integrated platform offering full-stack capabilities from technical design, development, asset management, leasing/sales, and operations.

The fund will acquire a fully operational, high-performance data centre developed by GLP and fully leased to a leading e-commerce company. Located in the Greater Beijing region, the seed asset is constructed to tier III+ standards, with a strong emphasis on environmental sustainability and energy efficiency.

“Digital infrastructure is essential to the adoption and advancement of AI. GLP China IDC Income Fund I is indicative of strong investor demand for stable income streams backed by high-quality real assets with the potential for long-term capital appreciation,” says Teresa Zhuge, executive vice chairman and chairman of the executive committee of GLP China. 

“With our operating and investment expertise, customer access and a track record of growth at scale, we are confident in building a competitive and differentiated data centre business to capture outsized growth in the new digital economy.”   

GLP has been involved in China’s real estate sector for over two decades. Leveraging its expertise in the market, the company says it was able to anticipate the explosive growth potential of the country’s data centre market.

The rise in adoption of AI, cloud services, 5G communications and Internet of Things continue to drive demand for domestic data centre capacity, with the data center market in China forecasted to increase by US$274 billion at a compound annual growth rate of over 38% from 2025 to 2029. This is supported by government-led policies aimed at driving AI-enabled innovation and growth across a range of industries.

GLP controls assets that will deliver 1.4 gigawatts of secured IT capacity, including 20 data centres across the four core regions of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, The Yangtze River Delta, the Greater Bay Area, and the Mid-Western Region.