he founder of AirTrunk has cashed in on the inexorable rise in demand for processing power and built a vast fortune on the rise of cloud computing.
Already a subscriber?It was the mother of all personality disputes that launched Robin Khuda down the road that ended with the hottest deal of this year.
For someone who has been at the centre of the biggest corporate transaction of 2024, Khuda has kept a relatively low profile. He declined to comment for this profile. Confidantes say he is wary of talking publicly afterThe transaction will be the culmination of a journey that started at the age of 18 when Khuda’s parents brought him to Australia from Bangladesh to study as an accountant.
Khuda helped guide the firm to a public listing and then survive the tumult of project funding problems.Khuda said this year at a private Financial Review Business Summit dinnerBut the company’s fortunes soon slumped, and its share price started tanking in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
Khuda worked as chief financial officer under Craig Scroggie, who remains NextDC’s chief executive. After a solid start, their relationship deteriorated according to a current colleague of Khuda’s. “The sheer size and scale of cloud and artificial intelligence means that the deal sizes are much, much larger ,” Scroggie says. “I think that’s just a reflection on the entire industry. There’s not really a player today of scale that’s not winning and benefiting from these trends.”
He went from bank to bank, and from investor to investor, looking for support. It took eight months. In late 2016, on the brink of insolvency and having dipped into his superannuation to pay staff, Khuda managed to secure $400 million in debt and equity from Goldman Sachs and San Francisco investment house TSSP.
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