CyrusOne
Private operator running 60+ data centers leased to cloud, finance, and enterprise tenants.
On the record
Checkpoint: Resolution of the paused $1.3B Goldman Sachs bond sale and CME lease dispute from the November 2025 outage
The call
CyrusOne's physical footprint and long leases hold up demand, but the CME outage and paused bond sale show its debt-funded growth model under real strain.
CyrusOne owns and operates 60+ data centers that store and process data for banks, tech companies, and traders. The company's physical buildings and long-term power contracts are expensive and slow for competitors like Equinix or Digital Realty to copy, which protects CyrusOne's business. However, a November 2025 outage caused by human error shook customer confidence and hurt the company's ability to borrow money, and the real test is whether major tenants like CME Group will stay or demand cheaper rates, walk away, or switch to rivals. If CME stays and accepts what happened, the damage fades quickly; if CME leaves or many others follow, CyrusOne's advantages crumble fast.
Why
01
AI pressure: None apparent. AI training and inference demand is the main reason hyperscalers keep leasing CyrusOne space, not a threat to it. Could AI do the core job? Unlikely.
02
Bigger players: Equinix. Equinix's interconnection platform with 10,000+ networks locks in cloud and enterprise tenants that CyrusOne competes for on raw capacity alone. Could a giant copy it? Probably.
03
What protects it. Long hyperscale leases and scarce grid interconnection capacity make its facilities hard to replace quickly.
What would change this call
CME Group renegotiates, shortens, or exits its Aurora lease before 2031 maturity. Would show the November 2025 outage caused real, lasting damage to tenant trust.
Paused $1.3B Goldman Sachs mortgage-bond sale resumes, is repriced, or is cancelled. Shows whether debt markets are pricing in reputational risk from the outage.
A second major outage or reliability incident occurs at any CyrusOne facility. Would confirm a pattern of operational failure rather than a one-off error.
Paused $1.3B Goldman Sachs mortgage-bond sale resumes, is repriced, or is cancelled. Shows whether debt markets are pricing in reputational risk from the outage.
A second major outage or reliability incident occurs at any CyrusOne facility. Would confirm a pattern of operational failure rather than a one-off error.
Key numbers
- 1,100+ MW contracted power in Texas
- $9.7B in new debt capital secured
- $1.3B bond sale paused after CME outage
Named risks
- CME lease dispute or renegotiation following November 2025 outage and human-error finding.
- Reliance on debt markets for capex; $1.3B bond sale already paused once after outage.
- Local opposition to new site approvals, e.g. contested 17-10 Sangamon County vote in April 2026.
- Grid interconnection constraints, PJM invoked emergency orders 43 times in 14 months per July 2026 report.
- Rising data center insurance costs from tornado-prone exposure per Swiss Re data cited July 2026.
Rivals, as read in July 2026
| Rival | Direction | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Equinix | losing to | Held largest US colocation revenue share, ~10.28% in 2024, ahead of Digital Realty's 9.98% |
| QTS (Blackstone) | losing to | Led hyperscale capacity with 37.7% share (4,752MW) in 2025 analysis; CyrusOne not in top-capacity tier |
| Vantage Data Centers | losing to | Second-largest hyperscale capacity share at 33.2% (4,187MW) in 2025 analysis |
| Digital Realty | contesting | Close second in colocation revenue share (9.98% in 2024) and 18.6% capacity share in 2025 |
Questions people ask
- Is CyrusOne profitable in 2026?
- Unknown. CyrusOne stopped disclosing audited financials after KKR and GIP took it private on March 25, 2022. Its last public figure was $1.2 billion revenue in 2021, up 17% year-over-year. Since then it has funded growth with debt, including a $9.7 billion facility in January 2025, not disclosed profit.
- Who owns CyrusOne now?
- CyrusOne is owned by funds managed by KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which took it private for roughly $15 billion including debt on March 25, 2022. GIP was itself acquired by BlackRock in 2024, so a 2026 trade report describes CyrusOne as backed by KKR and BlackRock.
- What caused the CME Group outage linked to CyrusOne?
- A chiller failure at CyrusOne's CHI1 facility in Aurora, Illinois caused a more than 10-hour CME Group outage on November 27-28, 2025, halting global futures and options trading. CyrusOne confirmed on December 6, 2025 the cause was human error, a failure to follow cooling-tower winterization procedures.
- Who is CyrusOne's biggest competitor?
- Equinix is CyrusOne's most cited rival, holding roughly 10.28% of US colocation revenue in 2024 versus Digital Realty's 9.98%, per a September 2025 market report. On raw hyperscale capacity, QTS (37.7% share) and Vantage (33.2% share) led in a 2025 analysis, with CyrusOne not among the top-capacity leaders.
- Could AI replace CyrusOne's business?
- No. AI training and inference demand is the primary driver of CyrusOne's growth, not a substitute for it, since AI workloads need physical racks, power, and cooling that CyrusOne provides. Its exposure is operational, shown by the November 2025 CME outage tied to legacy cooling design under AI-driven heat density.
- Did CME Group drop CyrusOne after the November 2025 outage?
- As of the available reporting through mid-2026, CME Group remained a CyrusOne tenant at the Aurora, Illinois facility under a 2016 sale-leaseback agreement. No public lease termination has been confirmed, though a planned $1.3 billion mortgage-bond sale managed by Goldman Sachs was paused in late November 2025 following the outage.
Timeline
- 2026-05-19Completed $1.05 billion single-asset CMBS financing on Dallas-area property
- 2026-03-25Broke ground on first Italy data center; company operates 60+ facilities globally
- 2026-02-09Announced Freestone County Texas campus, up to 760MW, with 1,100+MW now contracted
- 2026-01-14Hired Robert Johnson as new Chief Business Officer
- 2025-12-06Confirmed CME outage cause was human error in cooling-tower procedures
- 2025-11-27Chiller failure at CHI1 Aurora facility caused 10+ hour CME Group global trading outage
- 2025-11Paused planned $1.3 billion Goldman Sachs mortgage-bond sale after CME outage
- 2025-06-13Announced new London LON6 facility, 90MW
- 2025-01-30Secured $9.7 billion in new debt capital for data center growth
- 2022-03-25KKR and GIP completed ~$15 billion take-private acquisition, stock delisted
Revision history
22 July 2026
First assessed. Protection under test. The text above is fixed as of this date and is not edited afterwards.
In the same band
Sources
- CyrusOne
- CyrusOne Breaks Ground on First Data Center in Italy (2026-03-25)
- KKR and GIP Complete Acquisition of CyrusOne (2026-07-13)
- How CyrusOne is Driving Data Centre Growth in Europe and US (2026-07-15)
- CyrusOne Secures $9.7 Billion in New Debt Capital to Fund Datacenter Growth (2025-01-30)
- Kirkland Advises KKR- and GIP-Owned CyrusOne on $1.05B CMBS Financing (2026-05-19)
- CME data centre outage caused by human error, CyrusOne says (2025-12-06)
- KKR, GIP Close $15B Acquisition of CyrusOne (2022-12-08)
- The private equity-owned data center behind giant CME outage (2025-11-28)
- Constellation and CyrusOne Announce Agreement to Support New Data Center Facility at Freestone Energy Center i (2026-02-09)
- CyrusOne Number of Employees 2026 (2026-06-29)
- CyrusOne Announces Robert Johnson As New Chief Business Officer (2026-01-14)