A consortium of investors including BlackRock, Nvidia, xAI, and Microsoft is acquiring Aligned Data Centers in a massive $40 billion deal. The companies announced on Wednesday that this move will accelerate the race for infrastructure to fuel the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.
This acquisition is a new indication of the fierce competition among global tech giants for data centers and processing power to run AI models. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, recently signed agreements to provide approximately 26 gigawatts of computing capacity — enough to power 20 million US homes. The new investment group is called Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP) and initially aims to make a capital investment of $30 billion. Including debt financing, the total amount could reach $100 billion. This will be AIP’s first major investment and the transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2026.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink commented on the deal with the following words:
“With the Aligned Data Centers investment, we are taking our goal of building the infrastructure to support the future of artificial intelligence one step further.”
AIP’s main investors also include Kuwait Investment Authority and Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek are also among them.
Aligned Data Centers operates data centers with 50 campuses and more than 5 gigawatts of capacity in the US and Latin America. The company will retain its headquarters in Dallas, Texas and continue operations under the leadership of CEO Andrew Schaap. This massive deal, combined with recent moves such as OpenAI’s 6-gigawatt chip supply agreement with AMD and Nvidia’s $100 billion investment plan, further intensifies the global power struggle in artificial intelligence infrastructure. This massive deal, combined with recent moves such as OpenAI’s 6-gigawatt chip supply agreement with AMD and Nvidia’s $100 billion investment plan, further intensifies the global power struggle in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
