Mercury spends $53m on stake in Datagrid, which plans $3.7b Southland data centre
Thursday, 23 July 2026
Mercury Energy has invested US$30 million (NZ$53 million) in Datagrid, a business led by technology entrepreneur Remi Galasso that plans to build a $3.7 billion data centre near Invercargill.
The power company is 51% owned by the Crown, meaning taxpayers now effectively have a stake in the venture of just under $27m.
Mercury said its funding had bought a 12.7% stake in Datagrid, valuing the company at $417m.
Datagrid’s facility should be the country’s “most advanced” large-scale datacentre, Mercury said in a release to the NZX on Thursday.
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Mercury chief executive Stew Hamilton, who has joined Datagrid’s board of directors, said it was a disciplined investment in a strategically important opportunity that bolstered Mercury’s position “alongside an important emerging source of long-term electricity demand”.
The company indicated it might put additional capital into Datagrid in future by also describing it as a “staged investment”.
“We have no obligation to but, yes, that is a possibility,” Mercury’s wholesale manager Tim Thompson told The Post.
Galasso said the investment would let Datagrid “move decisively”.
“Partnering with a leading New Zealand green electricity generator like Mercury is a strategic step for us, not just an electricity supply arrangement.”
Data centre investments have become controversial both in New Zealand and overseas in recent years, in large part because of the electricity they consume.
But Galasso has argued battery-backed “AI factories” such as the one Datagrid is planning ease pressure on the power grid — rather than add to it — because their power usage can flex up and down, smoothing out peaks in demand that currently often need to be met using fossil-fuelled generation.
“Contracts like ours support new green generation, which historically means lower prices for consumers everywhere,” he said earlier this month.