LightEdge Announces Acquisition by GI Partners

DES MOINES, IA, September 14, 2021 – LightEdge, a leading provider of colocation, cloud and managed service solutions, based in Des Moines, today announced that GI Partners, a leading private investment firm, has acquired a controlling interest in the business. GI Partners’ investment will support and accelerate the growth of LightEdge.

GI Partners has invested extensively in infrastructure companies and properties underpinning the digital economy for 20 years. GI Partners is acquiring LightEdge through its GI Data Infrastructure Fund which was launched last year and manages over $1.8 billion of capital commitments.

“I am very proud of what we accomplished together with our owners, The Anschutz Corporation, over the years. We never took our eye off the vision for this company and Anschutz supported us the entire journey. We got to know the GI Partners organization over the last year, and I believe we found the perfect investment partner to help take our company to the next level,” said Jim Masterson, CEO of LightEdge.

"Over the last several years, LightEdge has emerged as a leading platform for colocation and cloud and managed services, particularly in the Midwest region. The Company has a proven model for delivering excellent service to enterprise customers in an increasingly complex hybrid-cloud world. We look forward to partnering with Jim and the LightEdge team to realize their vision for growth in the business," said Mark Prybutok, Managing Director of GI Partners.

LightEdge operates seven data centers in Des Moines, Kansas City, Omaha, Austin and Raleigh. LightEdge has been majority-owned by The Anschutz Corporation since 2008.

“The acquisition reflects the tremendous value that LightEdge has built over the past 14 years and it was important for us to find the right investment organization to take LightEdge to the next growth phase of the company. GI Partners is the perfect hand-off and we have no doubt the future remains bright for the entire LightEdge team and its customers,” said Augie Cruciotti, Managing Director at The Anschutz Investment Company.

Paul Hastings acted as legal counsel to GI Partners. Bank Street Group LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor to LightEdge and The Anschutz Corporation, and Hogan Lovells acted as legal counsel.

About LightEdge
LightEdge Solutions is a leading hybrid cloud and colocation service provider with seven purpose-built data centers across the Midwest and Texas. With 25 years in business, LightEdge offers a full stack of best-in-class services delivering unbeatable uptime, security, and flexibility for businesses’ mission-critical IT. Their premier colocation, cloud, disaster recovery, and security solutions are designed to support complex hybrid IT deployments and audited against the industry’s top global security and compliance standards. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

About GI Partners
Founded in 2001, GI Partners is a private investment firm with over 100 employees based in San Francisco, California with offices in New York, Chicago, Greenwich, CT, and Scottsdale, AZ. The firm has raised over $29 billion in capital from leading institutional investors around the world to invest in private equity, real estate, and data infrastructure strategies. The private equity team invests primarily in companies in the healthcare, IT infrastructure, services, and software sectors. The real estate team focuses primarily on technology and life sciences properties as well as other specialized types of real estate. The data infrastructure team invests primarily in hard asset infrastructure businesses underpinning the digital economy. For more information, please visit www.gipartners.com.

About The Anschutz Corporation
The Anschutz Corporation is a privately held company based in Denver, Colorado. The company has diversified investments worldwide in hospitality, technology, traditional and renewable energy, real estate, and media/entertainment.