(Bloomberg) — BlackRock Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are teaming up to invest in data centers and other infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence.
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The strategy, dubbed the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership, will aim to attract $30 billion of private equity capital, leveraging that to as much as $100 billion to invest, the companies said in a statement Tuesday.
The infrastructure investments — including energy projects — will be mostly in the US, with a portion of the funds being deployed in US partner countries, according to the statement.
“Mobilizing private capital to build AI infrastructure like data centers and power will unlock a multitrillion-dollar long-term investment opportunity,” BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said in the statement.
The firms are also teaming up with Global Infrastructure Partners and Abu Dhabi’s MGX, which was created specifically this year to invest in AI.
Nvidia Corp. will support the coalition with its expertise in AI data centers and factories. The chipmaker has poured money into creating software, networking and other pieces of technology that it says are essential to quickly putting together complete AI-systems.
BlackRock — the world’s biggest asset manager — announced in January that it would buy GIP for about $12.5 billion, and said last week that it expects to complete the acquisition on Oct. 1.
Microsoft has invested $13 billion in AI research lab OpenAI and is overhauling its entire product line around AI features. The software firm is dramatically expanding its own spending on data centers and computing infrastructure to deliver these services and has said its ability to serve AI customers is being constrained by not having enough chips and data center capacity.
Energy companies across the US are racing to meet a surge in demand from power-hungry AI data centers, with electricity usage by the facilities poised to surge as much as 10 times current levels by 2030, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
To meet that demand, energy companies are delaying the retirement of coal and gas plants, planning the construction of new gas plants and building out clean energy like solar and wind farms. The competition for electricity has even led to increases in how long it takes to connect new data centers to the power grid, with the time period in Virginia’s Data Center Alley stretching to as much as seven years.
Microsoft has also been talking with OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, who’s developing his own plans for groups of investors and tech companies to collaborate on ways to dramatically expand computing infrastructure for AI products.
The Financial Times reported on the partnership earlier.
–With assistance from Robin Ajello, Josh Saul and Ian King.
(Updates with additional partners in fifth paragraph and context throughout.)
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