Canadian tech firm Hypertec could take its data center and cloud unit, 5C, public in the near future.

Speaking at the Bloomberg Canadian Finance Conference in New York this week, Hypertec CEO Simon Ahdoot said: "Realistically, the growth trajectory we've seen makes it so we're absolutely considering an IPO. That's something that I expect will be in further discussions after we close the current round of financing."

Hypertec formed 5C Group last year when its Hypertec Cloud division was spun out and merged with the acquired 5C Data Centers.

5C has since raised more than $1.4 billion in funding, including equity financing led by Brookfield Asset Management and debt financing led by Deutsche Bank AG. Hypertec remains the largest shareholder, however.

"The next piece is going to raise an incremental $5 billion or $6 billion in a combination of debt and equity," Ahdoot added.

The Canadian firm has facilities in development across Ohio, Arizona, North Carolina, and Tennessee that could reach more than 2GW at full build-out. Expansion into Europe is also planned to support AI firm Together AI.

Founded in 1984 as an IT systems and system manufacturing business, Hypertec previously had a data center business – Hypertec DCS – which was sold to Vantage in 2020.

Hypertec then acquired Cloud.co in 2021 and relaunched it as Hypertec Cloud. The cloud unit has previously said it is offering services from 12 owned and colocation facilities globally.

A growing number of data center and cloud companies have recently or are set to go public. The likes of Nscale, Firmus, SB Energy, Lambda, Vantage, CyrusOne, and DayOne are set to IPO in the near future. Csquare, Magnora, Cerebras, Sharon AI, and SpaceX have IPO'd this year.