CBRE to Buy Onnec for $610 Million in Cash, in a Data-Center Deal Worth Up to $1 Billion

CBRE built its name on the buildings. With Onnec, it is buying the wiring inside them — the cabling and connections that let servers actually run AI workloads — and paying up to $1 billion to do it.

CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE: CBRE) said on Tuesday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Onnec Group Limited, a London-based provider of data center infrastructure services for the world's largest technology companies in Europe and Asia Pacific. The initial purchase price is £460 million (approximately $610 million) in cash, with a multi-year earnout of up to £300 million (approximately $400 million) more if Onnec meets certain growth thresholds. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Inside the data center, not just around it

The deal takes the world's largest commercial real-estate services firm a step further from bricks and mortar and into the technology inside the building. Along with CBRE's 2024 purchase of U.S.-based Direct Line, Onnec moves CBRE into the work inside the hall itself — wiring and connecting the equipment that runs AI workloads — what chief executive Bob Sulentic called “where the actual compute happens,” the Wall Street Journal reported. CBRE's traditional data-center work has centred on construction services, management, financing, and sales and lease brokerage. The demand case is in CBRE's own market numbers, cited by the Journal: data-center capacity in eight major U.S. markets grew nearly 34% in the year that ended June 30, and even after that expansion only 1.4% of capacity was vacant.

What Onnec brings

Founded in 1986 and based in London, Onnec designs, installs and maintains the network, fiber and data-center infrastructure its clients run on. Its approximately 800 employees serve hyperscalers across key markets in the United Kingdom, Continental Europe and Asia Pacific — the same work CBRE already delivers in the United States, which the company said makes the geographic fit direct. CBRE expects Onnec to generate approximately £370 million ($498 million) in revenue and more than £50 million ($67 million) of core EBITDA in 2027, and to be immediately accretive to CBRE's core earnings per share. Onnec will operate as part of CBRE's Critical Infrastructure Services line of business. “We’ve long believed Onnec is an excellent fit in this strategy,” said Vikram Kohli, CBRE's chief operating officer, calling the acquisition part of an explicit strategy to build a global infrastructure services business alongside the real-estate business.

A $7 billion infrastructure ambition

The arithmetic shows how large that side business is becoming. CBRE expects Critical Infrastructure Services to generate nearly $4.5 billion of total revenue in 2027, including contributions from Onnec, and the rest of its services businesses — most notably Project Management and Advisory Services — to generate almost $2.5 billion of infrastructure services revenue, for total estimated 2027 infrastructure services revenue of nearly $7.0 billion, excluding revenue from periodic data-center land sales in the development business. The Journal put the starting point in context: in 2025, CBRE's data-center and other infrastructure work produced roughly $450 million of earnings — 14% of the company total, up from just 3% in 2021. The Journal also carried the caution inside the boom: Sulentic called the AI and data-center industry “extremely frothy,” while arguing CBRE has work beyond new construction, including upgrading and managing existing facilities.

Terms, advisers and what to watch

J.P. Morgan Securities, LLC is acting as financial advisor and Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP as legal advisor to CBRE; Goldman Sachs International is acting as financial advisor and Freshfields LLP as legal advisor to Onnec. What to watch is the closing timetable — completion around the end of the year depends on the customary regulatory approvals — and, after that, whether Onnec hits the growth thresholds that unlock the earnout: the difference between a $610 million deal and a $1 billion one is performance CBRE has not yet bought. The release names the forward-looking risks plainly, including continued growth in clients' need for Onnec's services and Onnec's ability to meet financial performance expectations.