{"slug": "switch-data-center-is-heading-for-an-80-billion-ipo-and-almost-nobody-saw-it", "title": "Switch data center is heading for an $80 billion IPO and almost nobody saw it coming", "summary": "Switch, the Las Vegas data center operator taken private for $11 billion in December 2022, is planning an IPO that could value it at close to $80 billion including debt, according to Reuters. The company has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase for a listing that could raise up to $10 billion as soon as the fourth quarter, reflecting surging demand for AI infrastructure. \"AI has made boring assets expensive,\" the report notes, as Switch's physical data center campuses provide the power, cooling, and connectivity needed for dense GPU clusters.", "body_md": "*Switch was taken private for $11 billion in December 2022. Now Reuters says it could return to public markets at close to $80 billion, and that tells you exactly where AI money is moving.*\n\nSwitch used to be the kind of data center company public markets could ignore without much penalty. Not anymore. The Las Vegas company has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase for an IPO that could raise up to $10 billion as soon as the fourth quarter, Reuters reported on July 14, citing two people familiar with the matter.\n\nThe proposed valuation is the blunt part: close to $80 billion including debt. DigitalBridge and IFM Investors completed their take-private deal for Switch in December 2022 at about $11 billion, including debt repayment, according to DigitalBridge's announcement at the time. Less than four years later, the same company is being discussed at more than seven times that number. The math isn't subtle.\n\nSwitch was founded in 2000 by Rob Roy and is based in Las Vegas. Its job is not glamorous in the software sense. It operates large data center campuses that supply the power, cooling and connectivity cloud providers and enterprises need to run dense GPU clusters. Reuters said its customers include Nvidia, Dell Technologies and FedEx. IFM Investors says Switch now operates 20 data centers across the U.S., with sites in lower-cost power and land markets such as Las Vegas and Reno that serve southern California and Silicon Valley.\n\nThat location detail matters because AI infrastructure is no longer just a chip story. You can buy the GPUs, hire the model team and still hit the harder limit: where do you put the machines, how do you cool them, and who can deliver enough power on a usable timetable? Switch has spent two decades building exactly that kind of physical capacity. The market caught up.\n\n## The private round set the price\n\nThe IPO report did not come out of nowhere. Bloomberg reported on July 2 that Switch was kicking off a private funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz that could raise about $2 billion and value the company at nearly $50 billion including debt. Bloomberg also reported that Andreessen Horowitz was expected to invest about $400 million as part of the financing.\n\nLook at that investor name for a moment. Andreessen Horowitz built its reputation around software, networks and startups, not refrigerated concrete boxes full of servers. If a venture firm that size is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a data center operator, it is not because data centers suddenly became exciting. It is because the profit pool around AI is spreading below the model layer and into the floor, the cabling, the power contracts and the cooling systems.\n\nThat is the useful part for you as a reader. The AI trade has spent years rewarding chipmakers and cloud platforms. Switch shows the next leg of the trade in plain view: infrastructure owners with real sites, real power access and customers that cannot wait three years for capacity. AI has made boring assets expensive. Frankly, that is often where the better signal sits.\n\n## Public markets now have to price scarcity\n\nReuters said the size, timing and valuation of the Switch IPO remain under discussion and could change. Switch, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan declined to comment to Reuters. Keep that caveat in. A planned IPO is not a completed listing, and a valuation target is not a market-cleared price.\n\nStill, the direction is clear enough. Reuters reported that U.S. IPO proceeds have reached $155.5 billion so far this year, citing Dealogic, the strongest pace since 2021. The same report pointed to a pipeline of technology and AI-related offerings, including possible debuts from Anthropic and OpenAI. Switch belongs in that conversation for a different reason. It is not selling a frontier model. It is selling access to the physical layer those models need.\n\nThe Information also reported that Brookfield Asset Management, KKR and other institutional investors had been in talks around a Switch funding round at a valuation of at least $50 billion. That does not mean every conversation becomes a cheque. It does show the crowd around the asset: infrastructure funds, venture capital and public-market banks all looking at the same company within weeks of each other.\n\nSwitch is not the only operator riding this demand, but it is the cleanest current example of how fast AI can reprice hard infrastructure. Google, Microsoft and Amazon get the easier headlines because you already know their cloud businesses. The awkward truth is that a cloud business still needs land, substations and cooling - and time. Those are not software problems.\n\nIf Switch does reach public markets near the number Reuters reported, investors will be asked to believe that data center scarcity deserves a valuation once reserved for much larger household names. Maybe they will. Maybe they will demand a discount once the prospectus shows the debt, capex and customer concentration in daylight. Either way, the next real test is no longer whether AI demand is huge. It is whether public investors will pay private-market prices for the buildings that make it usable.\n\n**Also read:** [A single Oracle PeopleSoft bug gave ShinyHunters two weeks to ransack 100 universities before anyone noticed](https://startupfortune.com/a-single-oracle-peoplesoft-bug-gave-shinyhunters-two-weeks-to-ransack-100-universities-before-anyone-noticed/) • [Guillermo Rauch says AI agents now trigger more than half of all Vercel deployments](https://startupfortune.com/guillermo-rauch-says-ai-agents-now-trigger-more-than-half-of-all-vercel-deployments/) • [Corgi tripled its valuation to $4 billion in eight weeks and is using the money to open coffee shops](https://startupfortune.com/corgi-tripled-its-valuation-to-4-billion-in-eight-weeks-and-is-using-the-money-to-open-coffee-shops/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/switch-data-center-is-heading-for-an-80-billion-ipo-and-almost-nobody-saw-it", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/switch-data-center-is-heading-for-an-80-billion-ipo-and-almost-nobody-saw-it-coming/", "published_at": "2026-07-26 01:32:28+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-26 01:52:34.785543+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Switch", "Goldman Sachs", "JPMorgan Chase", "DigitalBridge", "IFM Investors", "Nvidia", "Dell Technologies", "FedEx"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/switch-data-center-is-heading-for-an-80-billion-ipo-and-almost-nobody-saw-it", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/switch-data-center-is-heading-for-an-80-billion-ipo-and-almost-nobody-saw-it.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/switch-data-center-is-heading-for-an-80-billion-ipo-and-almost-nobody-saw-it.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/switch-data-center-is-heading-for-an-80-billion-ipo-and-almost-nobody-saw-it.jsonld"}}