CVC DIF takes majority stake in Frankfurt colocation operator

CVC DIF has agreed to buy a significant majority stake in Firstcolo, the Frankfurt colocation operator, from Cube Infrastructure Managers. The purchase, first reported by Data Center Dynamics, is being made through DIF Value Add IV and is expected to close by the end of September 2026. Terms were not disclosed.

Firstcolo was founded in 2007 and remains founder-led. It serves more than 350 enterprise customers with colocation, dedicated cloud hardware, cloud, connectivity and managed services. Its two Frankfurt facilities are nearly full, according to DCD. The Werkhaus site offers 1,200 sqm of capacity. That is room for 1,000 racks. The AOC Data Center, in the Accent Office Center, has around 390 racks. The operating portfolio is generating cash, and there is little unused capacity left to sell.

The growth asset is FRA7, a 24MW data center under development in Rosbach, outside Frankfurt. The project totals 11,555 sqm. It is due to go live in early 2027. Jerome Evans, CEO and co-founder, calls it the first building block of a scalable, high-performance infrastructure platform for AI, cloud and enterprise workloads. The company says it will look for further sites in German markets beyond Frankfurt.

The buyer is the infrastructure arm of CVC, formerly DIF Capital Partners. It manages €18 billion in infrastructure assets across energy transition, transport, utilities and digitalization. Willem Jansonius, co-head of the CVC DIF Value Add strategy, describes Firstcolo as a rare opportunity in a supply-constrained FLAPD data center market, with a cash-generative existing business and a substantially de-risked expansion project. The founder team stays in place: Evans, COO and co-founder Nicolaj Kamensek, and CFO Dennis Bergfeld.

CVC DIF is buying a platform with a committed expansion. The near-full operating sites provide the revenue base, FRA7 the growth, and the founders the continuity. For a value-add fund, that is an income-producing asset with a development attached and management already in place to execute it.

The risk sits in delivery. FRA7 has to go live in early 2027. The de-risked label is CVC DIF's own, and it will be tested by schedule slippage, customer commitments and the usual friction of building in Germany. If FRA7 lands on time, the platform story holds. If it slips, the value-add thesis turns into a hold-and-manage exercise.

For Cube Infrastructure Managers, the sale ends a hold of about four years. Cube bought Firstcolo in 2022, when the company had two operating facilities and a development ambition. By selling before FRA7 goes live, Cube effectively hands the construction-phase risk to CVC DIF, along with the upside. That timing says as much about Cube's strategy as about Firstcolo's prospects.

The deal lands alongside a Frankfurt data-center exit, as Private Infrastructure Daily has reported. The pairing points to asset rotation in the German mid-market: one owner trades in while another trades out, at a moment when the FLAPD market is supply-constrained.

A four-year hold of this kind works when the asset appreciates in scarcity value and the seller leaves the next owner something to build. The question is whether Firstcolo becomes the consolidation vehicle CVC DIF describes. Evans has said the goal is to expand in Frankfurt and develop further high-performance data centers in attractive German markets — a roll-up statement, and the buyer's language of a "leading German colocation platform" is the tell.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of September. The undisclosed price leaves the market without a valuation marker for a mid-market German colocation platform. FRA7's live date in early 2027 will be the next hard data point.