ZeroHedge Pro Subs are already well-familiarized with the “infinite money” circle-jerk deals powering the AI bubble – from endless chip announcements to vendor financing schemes to a wave of mega-data-center buildouts sweeping the nation. We’ve detailed the mechanics behind this boom and shared the latest Bank of America Fund Managers Survey to cut through the hype and capture what institutional desks are really saying about AI.
The headlines keep coming. The latest dropped on Wednesday morning: a new investment consortium has been revealed, featuring BlackRock, Nvidia, xAI, and Microsoft, and is reportedly buying one of the world’s largest data-center operators.
Financial Times reports the investment consortium is purchasing Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie Asset Management for $40 billion. This deal marks the first major one under $100 billion pool of funds called “AI Infrastructure Partnership.”
The partnership also includes Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), Abu Dhabi’s MGX, Temasek, and the Kuwait Investment Authority and aims to underwrite and expand the infrastructure behind the boom. It combines investor heavyweights with top tech firms that fast-track land, energy, materials, and chips. This collaboration drastically reduces build times for clients like OpenAI, Google, and Meta, while also ensuring America leads the AI race against foreign adversaries, such as China.
Here’s more from FT’s report:
The investment group has earmarked $30bn in equity and a further $70bn in debt financing to buy and build data centre companies. Its planned takeover of Aligned Data Centers is the first in what could be a series of large acquisitions and construction projects in the sector.
The consortium plans to expand Aligned quickly in the coming years, more than doubling its 50 data centre campuses in the U.S. and Latin America.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told the FT that the AI Infrastructure Partnership allows tech giants to lease rather than own their hyperscale facilities, keeping data centers off their balance sheets, which only supports higher valuations. He added that institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds are also financing these projects.
“Together, we can address critical questions: how to design the right data centres, how to solve water and energy challenges, and how to respond to customers’ needs. That’s what’s unique about the partnership – it hasn’t been replicated anywhere else,” Adebayo Ogunlesi, co-founder of GIP, told FT in an interview.
Ahmed Yahia Al Idrissi, chief executive of MGX, noted, “We very much believe that the requirements for global capacity buildout – both from a cloud and AI perspective – are massive. We’re talking about roughly 20 gigawatts a year globally, and about half of that would be in the U.S.”
There are two competing narratives about the AI investment cycle: one camp calls it a “bubble,” while the other insists it’s just beginning innings. The AI Infrastructure Partnership members, and separately, firms like Blue Owl, clearly believe this cycle has years of momentum left. Meanwhile, the latest Bank of America Fund Managers Survey (read here) shows institutional investors naming an “AI bubble” as the biggest tail risk in markets.
Which narrative prevails remains the trillion-dollar question, though we suspect the Trump administration will do everything possible to ensure this AI investment cycle continues well into his second term.
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