Sureel Choksi

President & Chief Executive Officer Vantage Data Centers

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Sureel Choksi has been president and chief executive officer of Vantage Data Centers since 2013, and sits on its board. He came to the job with an unusually early and unusually deep grounding in internet infrastructure finance: he joined Level 3 Communications in 1997 as a director of finance and was its chief financial officer by July 2000, aged 27, through the most violent years the telecom capital markets have ever had. That combination — a financier who has run marketing, wholesale markets and services inside an infrastructure operator — is the shape of the job at Vantage, where the constraint on growth is not demand for data centre capacity but the ability to fund and build it. Under him Vantage has gone from a regional owner-operator to a global platform across North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific.

Career Highlights

• President and chief executive officer of Vantage Data Centers since 2013, responsible for vision, strategy and overall leadership, and a member of the board of directors.
• Has transformed Vantage from a regional data centre owner and operator into one of the fastest-growing global providers, with operations in North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific.
• Became Group Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Level 3 Communications in July 2000 at the age of 27, having joined as a director of finance in 1997.
• Held six executive roles at Level 3 in all — chief marketing officer, chief financial officer, president of wholesale markets, executive vice president of services, group vice president of corporate development, and treasurer.
• Was an operating executive at Silver Lake Partners and chief executive officer of Elevation Data Centers before joining Vantage.
• Sits on the board of directors of Zayo, the global fibre-based communications provider, and on the board of trustees of Strada Education Network.
• Holds two Penn degrees: a Wharton B.S. in economics and a Bachelor of Applied Science from the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Professional Journey

Choksi read economics at the Wharton School — with concentrations in finance, accounting and entrepreneurial management — and took a Bachelor of Applied Science from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science alongside it. He began in investment banking, as an analyst at Gleacher & Company from 1995 to 1997, followed by a spell as an associate at TeleSoft Management.

He joined Level 3 Communications in 1997 as a director of finance, and the ascent from there was very fast. He was vice president and treasurer from January 1999, group vice president of corporate development and treasurer from February 2000, and Group Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from July 2000. Level 3’s own 10-K, filed in March 2003, gives his age at that point as 30, which places him at 27 when he took the CFO role at a company then spending billions building a transcontinental fibre network into the teeth of the telecom collapse. That is not a normal chief financial officer appointment, and the period that followed — refinancings, asset sales, an industry-wide capital drought — was not a normal apprenticeship.

He did not stay in finance. Vantage’s account of his Level 3 career lists chief marketing officer, president of wholesale markets and executive vice president of services alongside the CFO and treasurer roles, so he moved from the balance sheet into commercial and operating leadership inside the same business. Very few people who run infrastructure companies have done both jobs in the same building.

After Level 3 he moved to the investor side as an operating executive at Silver Lake Partners, and served as chief executive officer of Elevation Data Centers — his first time running a data centre business outright.

He became president and chief executive officer of Vantage Data Centers in 2013. At that point Vantage was a regional owner and operator; it is now a global platform, and the scale of the capital involved has grown accordingly. The company reported closing more than $40 billion of capital during 2026, including a $2 billion five-year development credit facility arranged by Evercore and Wells Fargo Securities with a dozen insurance and institutional investors, structured as a warehouse for early-stage North American development. That is the essential mechanic of the business he runs: data centre capacity for AI and cloud customers is sold years before it exists, and the company that can commit capital fastest wins the site. Vantage’s leadership bench has been built out around him accordingly, with regional presidents for North America and EMEA and a global chief financial officer.

Outside Vantage, he serves on the board of directors of Zayo, the fibre-based communications provider, and as a trustee of Strada Education Network, an education-focused non-profit.

Education

University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School

Bachelor of Science, Economics, with concentrations in finance, accounting and entrepreneurial management

University of Pennsylvania, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Applied Science