SYDNEY, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Australian pension fund Aware

Super will invest $300 million in an Asia Pacific data centre

business, dispelling concerns the sector is becoming over-valued

and at risk of becoming an asset bubble.

The Sydney-based fund said it will ‌take a minority stake in

the Skyline joint venture data centre business which owns

Vantage Data Centres ​Asia Pacific.

Vantage owns 10 hyperscale data centres across Australia,

Japan, Taiwan, ‍Malaysia and Hong Kong.

The transaction is the second ⁠major data centre ⁠deal for

Aware in less than three years after it bought a stake in

U.S-based data centre ‌business Switch in 2023. Switch ​was taken

private by DigitalBridge ( DBRG/PJ ) and an IFM Investors affiliate

for $11 billion in late 2022.

Aware, which has A$210 billion ($141.48 billion) in ⁠funds

under management, said it has ‍A$6 billion ($4.04

billion)invested ​in digital infrastructure assets. The fund's

infrastructure portfolio is worth about A$22 billion ($14.82

billion), it said.

Aware's head of infrastructure, Mark Hector, said ‍while data

centre deals were becoming increasingly valuable the fund was

confident the sector was not becoming over-heated in price

terms.

Australia's Macquarie Asset Management in October sold its

Aligned Data Centres business for $40 billion to a consortium

led by BlackRock ( BLK ), Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Nvidia ( NVDA ) .

"I don't think in the near ​term, ‍we're at risk of too much

of a bubble," Hector told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

"I think if you're buying ​existing data centers or you're

buying something that is being built with signed contracts you

know that as soon as you build it, you've got revenue contracts

to pay for it," he said.

"As long as you're not prepaying today for a lot of that

uncertain growth in the medium to the longer term, ​then you're

really controlling your valuation downside."

Hector said Aware was keen to step up its Asian

infrastructure investments, to add diversity to its existing

portfolio of Australian, North American and ‍European assets.

($1 = 1.4843 Australian dollars)