(Yicai Global) March 18 -- Foxconn Industrial Internet, a China-listed supplier of industrial internet services owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry, plans to pay USD77.6 million for its parent company’s data center and a server plant being built in the United States to meet surging demand in North America.

Foxconn Industrial will buy the assets in Wisconsin from AFE, a wholly owned unit of Hon Hai, the Shenzhen-based firm said in a statement after China’s markets closed today. Work on the center began in February last year and is expected to finish by the end of this month, while work on the server plant has been completed.

Demand for servers from cloud-computing service providers has soared amid a pronounced uptick in telecommuting, online education and entertainment as a result of the pandemic, Foxconn Industrial said. The company’s US plants cannot satisfy this new demand at present.

The agreement does not fall under the scope of compulsory reporting required by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, but the committee is likely to execute its right to investigate the deal, and some restrictive measures on the grounds of national security are possible, Foxconn Industrial noted.

Taipei-based electronics manufacturing giant Hon Hai, better known as Foxconn, founded Foxconn Industrial in 2015 and listed the unit in June 2018. Its shares [SHA: 601138] closed little changed today, down 0.2 percent at CNY13.52 (USD2.08).

Editor: Tom Litting