CBRE agreed to acquire London-based Onnec Group for roughly $610 million in cash plus up to $400 million in performance-based payments. That number says more than any press release.
Onnec employs 800 people who install and maintain cabling and equipment racks inside data centers for major technology clients across Europe and Asia Pacific. Combined with CBRE’s 2024 purchase of U.S.-based Direct Line, the deal shifts the firm’s data center business from traditional construction and brokerage services into the technical infrastructure where servers operate.
I read this as CBRE buying its way into the layer where the actual compute happens, not just the shell around it. Chief Executive Bob Sulentic said the moves take CBRE into “where the actual compute happens.”
Data center capacity in eight major U.S. markets grew nearly 34% in the year ended June 30, with vacancy at just 1.4%. Infrastructure work, including data centers, energy, and transportation, now generates 14% of CBRE’s earnings, up from 3% in 2021.
The firm expects roughly $7 billion in infrastructure revenue by 2027. JLL, the second-largest commercial real estate services firm, has also expanded its data center team, roughly doubling headcount over the past two years.
The expansion ties commercial real estate firms more closely to technology spending cycles, raising questions about concentration risk. Sulentic acknowledged the AI and data center market is “extremely frothy,” though he pointed to revenue opportunities beyond new construction, including facility upgrades and management.
Shares of CBRE, JLL, and other services firms fell sharply in February as investors weighed whether AI could automate research, valuations, and dealmaking functions. I read that selloff as a warning: whoever owns the cabling and rack installation margin may own the real collateral in the AI buildout. Watch whether lenders start asking for that technical layer in their underwriting.