CBRE announced plans on Tuesday to acquire Onnec Group Ltd., a data center infrastructure provider, for $610M in cash and up to $400M more in growth incentives.
The London-based Onnec installs and services data center equipment for technology companies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Onnec is expected to generate nearly $500M in revenue and more than $67M of core earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization next year.
The deal, coupled with CBRE's acquisition of Direct Line Global in 2024, takes the Dallas-based CRE titan into “where the actual compute happens,” CEO Bob Sulentic said to The Wall Street Journal. Onnec will join CBRE's critical infrastructure services line, which the company anticipates will generate nearly $4.5B of its total revenue next year.
Data center supply in the nation's eight primary markets surged by almost 34% year-over-year during the first half of 2026, CBRE reported. Despite that record supply, vacancy in those primary markets fell to a record-low 1.4% as capacity was absorbed as quickly as it was completed. CBRE is now positioned to be part of nearly every stage of a data center’s build, from brokering land deals and originating debt to project management and infrastructure installation.
Infrastructure work on data centers and other projects generated around $450M in earnings for CBRE in 2025. That accounted for 14% of the company’s total earnings and was a significant step up from the 3% it was responsible for in 2021.
To me, this signals that the real fee pool is moving from the dirt to the ductwork.