Sovereign wealth fund GIC has formed an investment vehicle with two other companies that will build and operate data centres across North America, it said yesterday.

EdgeCore Internet Real Estate, as the venture is called, will initially be funded with about US$800 million (S$1 billion) of equity supporting investment of around US$2 billion.

It has already acquired land in Mesa in Arizona, and intends to close deals to buy sites in Dallas in Texas, and Reno in Nevada before the end of this quarter.

Construction will begin once the acquisitions have been completed.

Each site is designed to deliver between 100MW and 200MW of critical power, the company said. It plans to complete the first building late this year.

EdgeCore intends to acquire more land in the second quarter. This will be in three tier-one markets with construction ideally to start within the year.

GIC Real Estate chief investment officer Lee Kok Sun said: "As a long-term value investor, we believe the secular growth in data consumption and public cloud usage will generate attractive returns in the data centre sector."

GIC's partners in the venture are Denver-based investment firm Mount Elbert Capital Partners and Canadian pension fund OPTrust.

Mount Elbert chief executive Tom Ray, who will also helm EdgeCore, said: "We are excited to execute upon our shared vision of creating a scalable North American data centre platform, and we look forward to expanding with GIC and OPTrust as we work to grow EdgeCore Internet Real Estate beyond our initial roll-out."