Universities Superannuation Scheme Commitment to Blackstone North-East England Data Center

Deal value: £250 Million (approx. $315 Million)

USS, the UK’s largest pension fund, committed £250 million to Blackstone’s £10 billion hyperscale data center project in North-East England, supporting the first phase of construction.

USS is capitalizing on accelerating AI and cloud computing demand, which has created a structural shortage of hyperscale data center capacity in Europe relative to the US. The pension fund views data centers as ideal long-term infrastructure assets offering inflation protection, stable cash flows, and alignment with its 30+ year investment horizon. This allocation also responds to the UK government's Mansion House Compact, which incentivizes defined benefit schemes to deploy capital into unlisted domestic assets to stimulate economic growth. The risk-adjusted returns from greenfield data center development currently exceed stabilized real estate assets, making this an opportune moment for institutional capital deployment.