TPG is negotiating to acquire British data centre operator Ark Data Centres from Elliott Investment Management in a transaction valued at about $5 billion, according to the Financial Times. If completed, it would rank among the largest data centre deals of 2026 and hand the private equity firm a platform with more than 560 megawatts of capacity across 27 facilities in the UK and Belgium (Reuters, 2026).
Ark, founded in 2005, operates campuses at Cody Park in Farnborough, Meridian Park in north London, and Spring Park in Wiltshire, with several projects under development including Union Park and Alliance Park in west London. It also holds a joint venture with the UK Cabinet Office called Crown Hosting Data Centres, which gives it access to all UK public sector data centre requirements. Elliott acquired Ark in 2012 and had been exploring a sale since at least 2022, with earlier valuations reported at £2.5 billion and £3 billion (Data Center Dynamics, 2026).
TPG has more than $245 billion in assets under management and has been building out infrastructure exposure through its Peppertree platform, which focuses on telecom and communications assets. The firm is already involved in data centre development through the Quantum Frederick campus in Maryland and an investment in Tata's HyperVault business.
The deal arrives against a backdrop of heightened UK government attention to AI infrastructure. This week's Budget introduced a British Data Centre Covenant offering priority grid access and planning support to strategic projects, with the stated aim of tripling AI-capable capacity by 2030. Ark's Crown Hosting relationship would give any buyer a direct channel into public sector workloads, including NHS and defence data that the government has said it wants processed domestically.
BuiltWorld AI Operational Take: The Crown Hosting joint venture is the asset that makes this valuation defensible. Public sector workloads come with predictable, long-term demand and sovereign requirements that private-sector hyperscalers cannot easily replicate. But the government relationship also means any ownership change faces scrutiny under national security rules, and TPG will need to demonstrate it can maintain UK sovereign control of sensitive compute. That regulatory clearance, not the $5 billion price, is the real gating item.
