Why Seraya Partners is betting where Asia's infrastructure giants aren't

Last week, the Singapore-based investment firm, founded by brothers James and Ivan Chern, announced it was investing up to $500 million of equity in Faraday Energy , a new energy infrastructure business established in partnership with Schneider Electric .

Faraday will develop, finance, own and operate energy generation and decarbonization technology for commercial and industrial facilities, power and grid infrastructure operators and data centers.

The deal is a good example of the strategy Seraya has promoted since its founding in 2021: buying and building platforms from scratch.

Seraya's tickets go as low as $50 million, from which it hires, assembles and scales the operations of a business until it reaches $2 billion to $3 billion in enterprise value. The eventual aim is to exit to the same bulge-bracket PE firms.

The first few years have been a steep learning curve for Seraya, whose founders cut their teeth at infrastructure investment firms including I Squared Capital , Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and RRJ Capital .

The relative nascency of Asia's infrastructure market means few experienced managers have branched out to launch an independent fund. Most global LPs do not have a clear thesis for Asian infrastructure because so few such funds exist, Seraya managing director for investments Khan Yow told PitchBook.

"For a lot of LPs, the default is to put capital into a global fund and let that manager determine the Asia allocation as part of their broader strategy, which means LPs don't necessarily get direct Asia exposure," Yow said. "So the first hurdle is often: Should they commit to a dedicated Asia infrastructure strategy at all?"

Seraya's fund also exposes LPs to greenfield risk. This could take the form of project delays, permit hurdles or uneven demand when developing and building new platforms from the ground up.

Seraya's digital infrastructure and energy transition thesis has nevertheless benefited from several macroeconomic tailwinds. The US-China race for AI supremacy is driving greater demand for compute across Southeast and North Asia. At the same time, the impasse along the Strait of Hormuz has added urgency to build greater energy resilience across renewables, batteries and grids in Asia.

There are already clear examples of exits in this sector, adding to investor confidence that there is a buyer for these assets.

Just last month, Sydney-based data center operator AirTrunk announced that it would raise $1.5 billion on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) via a REIT IPO. The firm was acquired by Blackstone and CPP Investments at an A$24 billion ($15.4 billion) valuation in 2024.

DayOne Holdings , a Singapore-headquartered hyperscaler, has also been touted to be raising $5 billion at a $20 billion valuation via a dual IPO listing in the US and Singapore.

Seraya has scaled to $2.7 billion in AUM across 50 assets, including six platform investments, in 12 countries.

It has three portfolio companies from its Fund I, which closed on $800 million in 2023: data center scaler Empyrion Digital ; Cyan Renewables , a provider of vessels used in the construction of offshore wind farms; and SPTel , a fiber-optic network provider. The fund had an IRR of 19.6% as of Q1 2026.

Seraya has also begun fundraising for Fund II, which has secured $25 million from the International Finance Corporation so far, according to PitchBook data. Yow declined to comment on Seraya's Fund II.

As an emerging GP, Yow stresses that the onus ultimately lies with Seraya to deliver. The firm maintains on-ground teams in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, where it conducts its deals.

"A lot of the challenge is the rush to grow and grab market share first," Yow said. "That's dangerous in infrastructure because it's a capex-heavy business. Once you've sunk that capex, you can't just decide afterward to squeeze out more sales."