AirTrunk CFO: Cloud and AI drive data centre demand

The ongoing migration to public cloud and the increasing demand for artificial intelligence, driven by workloads have contributed to significant changes in the data centre space in Australia and New Zealand, according AirTrunk CFO Prashant Murthy.

As part of the Treasure and Technology – The Future of Digital Infrastructure Investments panel discussion at the Schneider Electric Innovation Summit in Sydney 2025 held on 17th and 18th March, Murthy explained the genesis of AirTrunk’s business came from the ongoing migration to public cloud.

This trend happened across various geographies, particularly in markets like Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Malaysia, and has become widespread in nearly every region.

“As we speak today, it’s remarkable to think that so much migration to the cloud is still underway for many enterprises,” he said. “But increasingly, we’re seeing the rise of AI, and use cases are emerging with cheaper and faster capabilities to create models… and that’s going to drive additional demand.”

According to Murthy there’s a lot of forecasts of where that sits in the pipeline for the data centre provider, which will also drive greater demand back into the cloud.

“For all the businesses that aren’t on cloud today, who want to access AI, you will need to be on cloud first,” he said. “It’s practically either impossible or too expensive to do it.

“You’re going to see a force multiplier in that direction, as well as new workloads come on because of that and the new AI products that are created.”

AI becoming part of national frameworks

In regions like the Global South, AI has become part of the national framework and government strategy; while the United Arab Emirates has a ministry of AI, creating cross-collaboration between countries, said another panelitst, Schneider , SVP secure power and data centre international operations Nirupa Chander.

“You can see this prioritisation of data centres, physical infrastructure, and AI-related infrastructure becoming part of national priorities from the [perspective] of data sovereignty, which is where it all started” she said.

There’s also a push to establish the Global South as a major player in future ecosystems, making technology more accessible and democratising its availability in the region, Chander claimed.

During a recent visit to a data centre customer in India recently, Chander was struck by the fact that India, as a population, uses nearly 35 per cent of all data centre capacity globally, and today, the physical infrastructure in the country serves maybe single digits of four to five per cent.

“You can just imagine the potential that if all Indians were to use data centres in the country, what kind of build-out is needed to make that,” she said. “To build data centres, you need the right energy infrastructure. You need now, for AI, water, and the right type of local ecosystems, whether it’s contractors or specialists.”

“From a geopolitical standpoint, not only from a business standpoint, it’s great these issues are becoming a real priority, but there is a lot to do,” she noted.

She identifies key trends, including high demand and the challenge of optimising, capturing, and maintaining long-term sustainability.

“I go back to the fundamentals, which are land and access, energy, and the skilled labour force,” she said. “Regardless of geography, those pillars are like a four-legged table, and we still need at least two of those legs to hold the table up.”

Evolution of investors in the data centre space

According to Murthy these trends intersect with the evolution of how capital is looking at the data centre space.

“I’d say this from the lens of 10 years ago, when no one really understood it,” he said. “So even as our own investors that we had back then, Goldman and TPG, they really got us off the ground.”

However, over the past decade, there has been a shift in the types of investors entering the data centre sector he explained, traditionally data centre investment was seen as a niche area, but is now considered their own asset class, attracting funding from investors like Blackstone and CPP Investment.

“Progressively, you’ve seen the infrastructure capital turn up into the space as well about five, six years ago when Macquarie Asset Management and PSP Investments were investors into our business,” explained Murthy. “Now we’ve got Blackstone and CPP, who are co-investing out of their real estate and infrastructure homes. To me, this is just part of that evolution of how this sector is really being seen.”

Murthy explained that the amount of capital that’s deployed into this sector incorporates the full value chain set, whether from the land, all the way through to the various aspects of supplying capacity and energy supply chain, but also AI chips, all the way through to the product.

“There is so much capital deployed against this entire value stack of products that is increasingly being seen as its own asset class,” he said. “I think that’s this interesting mix between real estate infrastructure with a technology lens to it, and frankly, also now a utilities infrastructure lens to it.

Increase in sustainability and social impact

Murthy noted that there’s “obviously challenges” in the ability to access supply or resources.

“Whether that’s land with sufficient power and water,” he said. “The ability to construct, permit and build with sufficient connectivity, access to capital, the supply chains to actually meet the needs of what’s in front of us and working very closely with suppliers to meet that.”

Murthy also noted there needed to be the right talent base to do the work and “then fundamentally”, to also ensure it’s done responsibly.

He explained that the data centre industry has evolved from focusing on infrastructure and contract structures to increasingly considering the impact on the entire ecosystem, including water, power, integration with other sectors, and sustainability.

“One of the great features of working with Blackstone [is it] recognise this as well,” he said. “You know, we do have a really cool sustainability debt platform, we’ve been softly announcing it for the last two years when we kicked it off, but we actually have converted all of our debt into sustainable income.”

AirTrunk has been putting every dollar it receives as a margin incentive into a social impact fund that it has been investing in community projects in all the geographies in which it operates.

“We have projects live in Australia and in Japan,” he said. “We have one that was about to be launched in Malaysia that unfortunately had to be pulled back. We have [been] running one in Singapore…we’re going to continue to sort of move it in that direction.”

Fundamentally this industry and AirTrunk’s spot in this industry has tied to adding social value, explained Murthy.

“Having this concept of social preference as a business [is] really our direction continuing,” he said. “Everything that we’ve done, we’re going to continue to do. We continue to look for more projects, more interesting, innovative ways.”

These initiatives are part of AirTrunk’s own evolution of its perspectives, explained Murthy. When the data centre provider started it was about PUE optimisation, energy wastage, which then translated into further green energy, green carbon solutions, which then translated further into how to optimise water.

DE&I

Murthy said these perspective changes also helped the business relook at gender diversity, which was 25 per cent and grew within a year to 36 per cent.

“We’re continuing to move towards 40 per cent to 50 per cent,” he said.

“We’re [one of] the only technology company’s with a median gender pay equity in favour of women.”

To strengthen its stance on gender equality, Robin Khuda, founder and CEO of AirTrunk made a $100 million donation in February, to the University of Sydney to fund an ambitious 20-year program, creating a pathway for girls from Western Sydney into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education and careers.   

The donation, from the Khuda Family Foundation focuses on improving STEM skills and increasing the number of women in technology.

While the data centre provider works on initiatives to meet its DE&I and sustainability goals, Murthy stated that its future growth will require access to funding, as it has a ‘greater aspiration to expand’ its platform.

Murthy noted AirTrunk was continuing to be “highly ambitious” about what it was trying to create, and which markets it was entering into and to “go deeper” and “go bigger”.

“Our business has always been built off the idea of speed, scale, reliability, efficiency, and sustainability,” he said.