Digital Realty Trust, Inc.
Company History
Digital Realty History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2004 in Austin, Texas
When was Digital Realty founded?
Digital Realty was founded in 2004 in Austin, Texas by GI Partners, making it 22 years old.
- Founded
- 2004
- Founding place
- Austin, Texas
- Founders
- GI Partners
- Headquarters today
- Austin, Texas
- Milestones documented
- 12 (2004–2026)
- Current CEO
- Andrew P. Power
- Acquisitions
- 4
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2004 | Digital Realty Created and Listed |
| 2012 | Sentrum Portfolio Acquired |
| 2014 | A. William Stein becomes CEO |
| 2015 | Telx Acquisition |
| 2016 | Equinix European Data Centres Acquired |
| 2017 | DuPont Fabros Acquisition |
| 2018 | Ascenty Acquisition |
| 2020 | Interxion Combination |
| 2022 | Andy Power Becomes CEO |
| 2022 | Teraco Majority Stake |
| 2025 | FY2025 Scale Update |
| 2026 | Largest-Ever Lease and Raised Guidance |
- Where was Digital Realty founded?
- Digital Realty was founded in Austin, Texas in 2004.
- Who founded Digital Realty?
- Digital Realty was founded by GI Partners.
- When did Digital Realty start?
- Digital Realty was founded in 2004.
- How old is Digital Realty?
- Digital Realty is 22 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
After the dot-com crash, telecom and internet companies left behind specialized buildings with heavy power feeds and dense fiber. GI Partners, a private equity firm led by Rick Magnuson and backed by CalPERS, bought a portfolio of these properties at distressed prices from 2001 onward, betting that internet demand would come back. In 2004 it packaged them into Digital Realty and listed the company on the NYSE as one of the first REITs focused on data centers.
Founders
GI Partners
Digital Realty was not started by engineers. It was assembled by GI Partners, which from 2001 bought specialized telecom and data-center buildings from distressed owners after the dot-com bust. Traditional real estate investors avoided these windowless, heavily wired properties, but GI Partners bet that internet traffic would recover and need them. In 2004 it combined the portfolio into Digital Realty Trust and took it public on the NYSE, with Magnuson as chairman and Michael Foust as CEO. GI Partners later sold down its stake as the REIT grew into an independent public company. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Digital Realty Created and Listed
Digital Realty is incorporated and becomes a public data-center REIT platform.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSentrum Portfolio Acquired
Digital Realty bought three London-area data centres from Sentrum in 2012 for about $1.1 billion.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgA. William Stein becomes CEO
A. William Stein became CEO of Digital Realty Trust in 2014. Stein is widely credited with transforming Digital Realty from a primarily North American real estate operator into a truly dominant, ubiquitous global technology infrastructure leader.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTelx Acquisition
Digital Realty expands interconnection and colocation capabilities through the Telx acquisition.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgEquinix European Data Centres Acquired
Digital Realty bought eight European data centres from Equinix in 2016 for about $874 million.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDuPont Fabros Acquisition
The company expands its hyperscale data-center footprint by acquiring DuPont Fabros.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAscenty Acquisition
Digital Realty enters Latin America by acquiring Brazilian data-center operator Ascenty, later held in a joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgInterxion Combination
Digital Realty strengthens its European colocation platform through Interxion.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAndy Power Becomes CEO
Andy Power becomes CEO after serving in senior finance and leadership roles.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTeraco Majority Stake
Digital Realty completes the purchase of a 55% stake in South Africa's Teraco on August 1, 2022.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgFY2025 Scale Update
Digital Realty reports $6.11B revenue, 310 data centers, 57.6M rentable square feet and 4,282 full-time employees.
Source: sec.govLargest-Ever Lease and Raised Guidance
A 200 MW hyperscale AI lease in Charlotte (Q1), Q2 revenue up 29% to $1.92B and 2026 Core FFO guidance raised to $8.15-$8.20 per share.
Source: nasdaq.comMajor Acquisitions
Interxion
2020To add Interxion's network-dense colocation campuses across Europe and become a full-spectrum global provider.
DuPont Fabros Technology
2017To add DuPont Fabros's wholesale hyperscale campuses in Northern Virginia, Chicago and Silicon Valley in an all-stock deal valued at about $7.6 billion including debt.
Teraco Data Environments
2022Digital Realty acquired a 55% majority stake in Teraco, South Africa's leading carrier-neutral colocation and interconnection provider, for $1.7 billion cash in a deal valuing Teraco's total equity at about $3.5 billion, completed August 1, 2022, to establish a dominant market position on the continent.
Telx
2015To add carrier-neutral colocation and interconnection facilities in major US metros.
Keep researching Digital Realty
Digital Realty Company History FAQ
What is the chronological history of Digital Realty from 2004 to the present?
Formed in 2004 by GI Partners and listed on the NYSE, Digital Realty pioneered wholesale data center leasing. It expanded into colocation via Telx (2015), scaled hyperscale via DuPont Fabros (2017), expanded globally via Interxion, Ascenty, and Teraco (2018 to 2022), and launched AI-ready liquid cooling on PlatformDIGITAL.
When did Digital Realty launch its PlatformDIGITAL global data center architecture?
Digital Realty launched PlatformDIGITAL in November 2019 to provide global enterprises with a unified, standardized framework for deploying hybrid IT infrastructure, managing data gravity, and interconnecting across hundreds of data centers worldwide.
How did Digital Realty perform during the 2008 global financial crisis?
Digital Realty kept growing through the 2008-2009 crisis because data-center leases are long-term and mission-critical, and it continued raising its dividend in those years.
When did Digital Realty issue its first Green Bond?
Digital Realty began issuing green bonds in 2015 to fund energy-efficient data-center development and has continued to issue them since.
How did Digital Realty support the rapid growth of cloud computing in the 2010s?
As enterprise workloads migrated to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle, Digital Realty became the primary physical landlord for hyperscale cloud clusters, building multi-hundred-megawatt campuses connected directly to cloud on-ramps.
When did Digital Realty relocate its corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas?
In January 2021, Digital Realty officially moved its corporate headquarters from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, reflecting its growing operational base in Texas and central positioning within the North American technology ecosystem.
How has Digital Realty evolved to meet the power demands of the Generative AI revolution?
From 2023 Digital Realty began offering high-density colocation for AI workloads, joined NVIDIA's DGX-Ready Data Center program and added liquid-cooling-capable capacity. In Q1 2026 it signed a 200 MW hyperscale AI lease in Charlotte, its largest ever.
What is Digital Realty's long-term vision for the future of global digital infrastructure?
Digital Realty's vision is to serve as the meeting place for the world's data, clouds, and artificial intelligence networks, providing sustainable, open, and interconnected physical infrastructure that powers global digital commerce for decades to come.
How did Digital Realty start?
Digital Realty was founded in 2004 by the private equity firm GI Partners. Following the massive dot-com crash, GI Partners brilliantly bought up 21 heavily distressed, empty data center properties at rock-bottom prices, packaged them into a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), and took it public.
Related Strategic History
Compare founding milestones and corporate evolution
Explore Digital Realty
Core profile pages, founders and related research hubs for this company.