VNET Group, Inc. has completed a strategic secondary-share transaction that places approximately 38.1% of the Chinese data center operator’s outstanding ordinary shares in the hands of two investment entities linked to Lochpine Capital. The Nasdaq-listed company said PJ Millennium I Limited and PJ Millennium II Limited closed the purchase of an aggregate 650,424,192 Class A ordinary shares from Success Flow International Investment Limited and Choice Faith Group Holdings Limited. The ownership calculation is based on 1,708,970,760 VNET ordinary shares outstanding as of June 30, 2026.

The closing completes a transaction first announced in May and represents a substantial change in VNET’s shareholder structure. Under the original share purchase agreement, the buyers agreed to acquire up to the full 650.4 million-share block for $1.4486 per Class A ordinary share in cash. VNET American Depositary Shares represent six Class A ordinary shares each, making the purchase price equivalent to $8.6914 per ADS. A Schedule 13D filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later specified aggregate consideration of $942,182,804 for the full block.

The distinction between a secondary purchase and a primary equity financing is important for investors assessing the deal’s financial effect on VNET. Success Flow and Choice Faith were the sellers of the existing securities, and the transaction documents describe the buyers as purchasing their holdings rather than subscribing for newly issued VNET shares. Under that structure, the roughly $942.2 million consideration is paid for the sellers’ equity interests rather than constituting fresh equity proceeds raised directly by VNET. The immediate corporate-finance consequence is therefore a change in ownership, governance and strategic alignment, not a corresponding increase in VNET’s cash balance from the transaction itself.

The September closing also completes a process that had already begun in August. According to the buyers’ August 28 Schedule 13D, the share purchase agreement allowed them to request a separate early closing for 195,127,260 shares owned by Choice Faith. The buyers exercised that option, and on August 24 each acquired 97,563,630 shares, for total consideration of $282,654,841 allocated to that first closing. At that point, the remaining 455,296,932 shares held by Success Flow were still awaiting the subsequent closing contemplated by the agreement.

That staged structure meant the buyer group already held about 11.4% of VNET after the August transaction, according to the Schedule 13D. Completion of the remaining purchase has now lifted the combined position to approximately 38.1%, based on VNET’s updated June 30 share count. The final percentage is broadly consistent with the ownership level projected when the transaction was originally announced in May, although the earlier projection used VNET’s March 31 outstanding-share base. The full transaction also closed before the fourth-quarter timetable initially stated when the investment was announced.

The ownership chain behind the purchasers is significant but requires careful distinction. PJ Millennium I and PJ Millennium II are wholly owned subsidiaries of PJ Millennium Limited Partnership. Its general partner is Lochpine BG I GP Limited, which in turn is wholly owned by Lochpine Capital Limited. VNET’s closing announcement describes Lochpine Capital as a non-controlled, non-consolidated affiliate of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, or CATL, the major Chinese battery and energy-technology company listed in Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

An SEC filing provides additional detail on that relationship. As of the August 28 Schedule 13D, Lochpine Capital was 45% owned by CATL Investment Limited, a subsidiary ultimately owned by CATL. Wisteria Green Investment Limited, owned by Wang Hongbo, held 35%, while Ymir Green Investment Limited, owned by Yee Chun Keung, held 20%. Those disclosures support describing the VNET buyers as CATL-linked or Lochpine-linked, but they do not support characterizing Lochpine Capital itself as wholly owned or controlled by CATL.

The scale of the 38.1% economic interest makes the related governance agreements central to understanding the deal. VNET said that, in connection with completion of the transaction, an investor rights agreement between the company and the buyers and a voting and consortium agreement involving the buyers, founder and Executive Chairperson Josh Sheng Chen and certain Chen-affiliated investment vehicles became effective. Those arrangements add contractual governance features on top of the buyers’ substantial equity ownership.

The previously filed transaction documents show that the investor rights agreement gives the purchasers a range of rights subject to applicable thresholds and conditions. These include demand, piggyback and shelf registration rights; information rights; pre-emptive and participation rights; and specified governance rights. The filing also identifies a right to appoint an investor director and consent rights over certain reserved matters. Transfer restrictions apply to certain holdings, including restrictions involving specified competitors. Together, those provisions give the new shareholder group institutional protections that extend beyond the economic value of the shares themselves.

At the same time, the voting arrangements limit the extent to which the 38.1% ownership percentage can be interpreted as straightforward independent voting control by the purchasers. The voting and consortium agreement provides that, during the applicable voting term, each purchaser will vote certain shares in accordance with written instructions from the founder parties, subject to specified exceptions and reserved investor matters. The agreement also includes transfer-related provisions and a right of first refusal in favor of the founder parties with respect to certain proposed sales.

VNET had already emphasized the control-stability element when announcing the investors in May. At the time, the company said the buyers would undertake actions designed to support the stability of company control. It also said that certain acquired shares would be voted at shareholder meetings in accordance with instructions from the founder parties for a specified period, subject to the terms of the consortium agreement. For investors, that structure creates a distinction between the buyers’ large economic exposure and the allocation of voting influence under the contractual arrangements.

The transaction also changes the role of Shandong Hi-Speed Holdings Group Limited in VNET’s shareholder base. Success Flow and Choice Faith, the two selling entities, were beneficially owned by Shandong Hi-Speed Holdings, according to VNET’s May announcement. The closing therefore transfers a major block previously associated with Shandong Hi-Speed to the PJ Millennium structure. Rather than bringing a new block of primary capital onto VNET’s balance sheet, the deal effectively substitutes one significant shareholder group for another while introducing a new set of governance and strategic relationships.

The shareholder transition comes alongside a separate commercial relationship between VNET and CATL. On August 18, VNET announced a strategic cooperation agreement with CATL aimed at deeper integration of computing infrastructure and energy technology. The companies said they planned to combine VNET’s large-scale computing-infrastructure development and operating capabilities with CATL’s new-energy technology, including work involving green data centers and direct green-power connections. VNET described the planned architecture as spanning gigawatt-scale compute-energy facilities, distributed compute-energy networks and a zero-carbon token ecosystem.

That operating agreement gives the ownership change a broader strategic context, but the two developments should not be treated as economically identical. The PJ Millennium share purchase is a securities transaction involving existing VNET shareholders and entities connected through Lochpine Capital. The CATL cooperation agreement is an operating and strategic framework between VNET and CATL. VNET has not said that the proceeds paid to the selling shareholders will finance the CATL partnership, nor has it characterized the secondary share purchase as a direct CATL capital injection into VNET.

For institutional investors, the combination nevertheless creates a closer network of interests around data centers, power infrastructure and next-generation computing. Large-scale artificial-intelligence and cloud workloads are increasing the importance of power availability, energy efficiency and grid connectivity in data center economics. VNET’s cooperation with CATL specifically targets the interface between computing capacity and energy systems, while the Lochpine-linked buyer group now has a major financial interest in VNET’s equity. The contractual structure provides the buyers with access to information, participation mechanisms and governance involvement that could make that strategic relationship more durable, although specific future projects remain subject to separate implementation and commercial agreements.

The closing also resolves a material transaction overhang that had remained since May. The initial agreement was subject to closing conditions, including shareholder approval at Shandong Hi-Speed Holdings, and VNET originally said completion was expected in the fourth quarter. The August early closing demonstrated that part of the transaction could proceed sooner, while the September 21 announcement confirms that the full 650.4 million-share purchase has now been completed. Investors can therefore shift their focus from completion risk to the practical consequences of the new shareholder structure and the rights embedded in the transaction documents.

Those consequences include board representation and reserved-matter rights, but also future questions about ownership changes. The Schedule 13D states that the reporting persons intend to review their investment on an ongoing basis and may, depending on VNET’s financial position, strategy, market conditions and other factors, consider actions including acquiring additional securities, disposing of securities, discussing matters with VNET or other shareholders, or entering financing arrangements involving the shares, subject to law and the transaction agreements. Such language is customary in activist-style beneficial ownership filings and does not itself indicate that any additional transaction has been decided.

The registration and participation rights also matter for longer-term capital-markets analysis. Demand, piggyback and shelf registration provisions can affect how a large shareholder may ultimately obtain liquidity, while pre-emptive and participation rights can influence the investor’s ability to maintain its economic position if VNET conducts future equity transactions. Transfer restrictions, rights of first refusal and restrictions involving competitors, however, place boundaries around that flexibility. The resulting framework is therefore designed both to protect the new investors’ economic position and to constrain how the stake may be transferred or voted under specified circumstances.

The transaction’s completion leaves VNET with a substantially different shareholder map but does not alter the company’s core operating identity. VNET remains a Nasdaq-listed provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral internet data center services in China, including internet data center, cloud and business VPN services. The company says it operates across more than 30 Chinese cities and serves more than 7,000 hosting and related enterprise customers. Those operating assets are now backed by a shareholder structure in which the PJ Millennium entities represent one of the most economically significant investor groups.

The central finance takeaway is therefore not simply that a new investor bought 38.1% of VNET. The closing completes a roughly $942 million transfer of a major strategic equity block, replaces a substantial Shandong Hi-Speed-linked position with Lochpine-connected investors, and brings into force contractual rights covering governance, capital-markets access, transfers and voting. Combined with VNET’s separate strategic cooperation with CATL, the transaction deepens the company’s institutional links to the energy-infrastructure ecosystem while preserving founder-related voting arrangements that make the distribution of governance influence more complex than the headline ownership percentage alone suggests.