The founder and longtime CEO of data center giant QTS is launching a new digital infrastructure development firm, just a year after accepting a $3B buyout to depart his former company.
Courtesy of QII
Chad Williams, founder and longtime CEO of data center giant QTS, is launching his next venture: Quality Infratech Intelligence.
Quality Growth Cos. — the family office of former QTS CEO Chad Williams — is launching QII, an independent company that plans to develop gigawatt-scale campuses for data centers, advanced manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries.
The new venture’s name, which stands for Quality Infratech Intelligence, is pronounced “Q-2.”
In an interview with Bisnow, its founder said this is a reference to the firm serving as a second chapter following his departure from Blackstone-owned QTS in spring 2025.
Williams had been at the helm of QTS for close to 20 years. He led the company from being a family-owned firm through an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013 to its eventual sale to Blackstone in a $10B take-private deal in 2021.
QTS ranked as North America’s largest data center landlord at the time of Williams’ exit, which was reportedly prompted by clashes over the direction of the company with Blackstone and other senior leaders. Williams declined to discuss the specifics of those reports, but he said that experience has informed his strategy for QII.
Williams insists the new company isn’t simply a continuation of the business model he developed at QTS. He says QII is centered around a vision of campuses not only for data centers but for hosting a vertically integrated digital infrastructure ecosystem in which artificial intelligence data centers enable the build-out of advanced manufacturing and other AI-reliant industrials.
“There’s demand coming that’s not just AI factories, it is industrial infrastructure, where technology and infrastructure come together at scales that have never been needed or required before for this next generation,” Williams said.
“We won’t be able to do that on every campus because there has to be land available, and sometimes you have enough for one or the other. But where you can gather those resources together, I think this will be unique.”
QII has yet to unveil any specific projects or sites where these powered campuses will be built. Still, Williams anticipates multiple announcements by year-end once those projects are “certain and moving forward.”
While QII has provided few specifics about its future development plans, Williams told Bisnow the firm is focused on nontraditional data center locations outside of primary markets.
He said he has executed this approach successfully in the past, with QTS developing major facilities in places like Atlanta and Richmond before they became major digital infrastructure hubs.
“I’ve gone sometimes where people have not thought to go or not been able to go, for whatever reason, and I think you should see that to be a consistent path going forward,” Williams said. “There may be a couple announcements where people go, ‘Oh, geez, why didn’t I think of that?’”
Although a growing share of developers building gigawatt-scale data center campuses are turning to on-site generation and behind-the-meter power deals to skirt yearslong wait times for electricity from the grid, QII is “committed to a grid-only strategy,” at least for now, according to Williams.
Rich Voorberg, the former president of Siemens Energy North America, will lead QII’s energy strategy.
Courtesy of QII
QII’s leadership team: Mark Westhoff, Rich Voorberg, Alex Rose, Chad Williams and Jeremy Bardin
Williams said his and Voorberg’s deep relationships with utilities and experience navigating the energy landscape are a key competitive advantage over the bevy of other new entrants to the data center space, giving QII the ability to find grid power where others can’t.
“I think people will be surprised that there are pockets of real capacity left,” he said. “We’re going to go take those opportunities on so that our customers have the benefit and security and resiliency to be connected like they need to be and want to be.”
At least initially, QII is being funded entirely by Williams’ Quality Growth Cos. family office, with no outside sponsor or investors. Williams said the company isn’t currently doing any additional fundraising, although capital partners may eventually be brought on board.
This cautious approach to bringing on new investors is heavily informed by the tumultuous end of his tenure at QTS, Williams said.
While Blackstone’s backing provided unprecedented resources to fuel the company’s expansion, it also forced changes to the company’s development strategy, operating philosophy and culture that its founder had spent years cultivating.
“We’re just not going to be in a position this time like I did the first time,” Williams told Bisnow. “We’re going to be very careful this time about where we take capital, how we take capital, and how does that capital influence the business decisions that we make.”
