AI vendor Aligned added to company’s portfolio

BlackRock is expanding its membership in the club of AI datacenter investors.

Another day, another blimp with billions flying the skies of AI. Today’s currency transfer comes from BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), an investment fund set to write a big check to buy out Aligned Data Centers, a large AI datacenter company. Bloomberg cites sources with knowledge of the deal and pins the amount at a tidy $40 billion.

Aligned may not be a household name in tech news, but according to its website, the company has 78 datacenters in locations around the U.S. and South America, totaling 5 GW of processing power capacity across current and future developments.

Bloomberg remarks that Aligned got a $12 billion investment in January and was one of the companies that recently met with President Trump about speeding up the country’s AI development. Aligned is also attracting attention from investor AGX (backed by Mubadala Investment Co.), which apparently wants to cut a separate deal with the datacenter provider.

The report remarks that the deal is set to be inked in a few days, but is not yet finalized. However, it’s hard to imagine the agreement being called off in this age, where AI businesses’ exponential growth has every investor under the sun tossing money at the prospect of massive short-term lucre. The $40 billion in play makes this deal one of the biggest this year, though it’s still early October, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see other large bets in short order.

Upon completion of the deal, Aligned would be joining CyrusOne in GIP’s AI datacenter portfolio. The fund’s many-paged checkbook isn’t going back in the drawer anytime soon, either; it’s reportedly considering buying out power company AES Corp.

If this news sounds familiar, it’s because it’s reminiscent of datacenter provider CoreWeave getting a $6.4 billion infusion from OpenAI just recently. As for Sam Altman’s company, it’s been cutting deals like crazy, the biggest ones a $300 billion contract with Oracle, and a $100 billion partnership with Nvidia for building 10 GW’s worth of datacenters.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/blackrock-subsidiary-buys-up-78-data-centers-totaling-5-gigawatts-in-usd40-billion-deal-ai-vendor-aligned-added-to-companys-portfolio