About 21% of the fund’s assets are in data centers, which it has owned since launching the fund. One of its largest holdings is Equinix (EQIX). It’s the biggest operator by far, with some 190 centers in 24 countries. Data centers are expensive to build, he says, but Equinix recoups its investments quickly; its net operating income per data center is about 30% of its building cost, he says. “In the data-center business, there are basically six owners,” says East, who also counts CoreSite Realty Group (COR), CyrusOne (CONE), and QTS Realty Trust (QTS) among his larger positions. “It isn’t impossible, but it is difficult to add more space; you need to have cheap electricity, a fiber-optic rich environment, and security and compliance.” Meanwhile, demand for data storage is growing more than 25% a year, and several trends are converging to further drive demand. More people are accessing more data from more devices and for more uses. “An autonomous car uses about 3,000 times more data than [the average] person uses in a day,” he says.