The world’s largest asset manager is partnering up with one of the world’s largest technology companies to build out the future of infrastructure for artificial intelligence.
What’s happening:
- Asset management giant BlackRock and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are partnering together to launch a new $30B USD fund for the purpose of building out new data centres
Why it matters:
- The new fund is aiming to capture the opportunity from artificial intelligence cloud computing through building out new data centre infrastructure globally as well as new sources of energy supply
By the numbers:
- The new BlackRock and Microsoft fund will look to raise $30B USD in equity as well as take on up to $70B USD of debt financing
Going deeper:
- Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth backed investment fund MGX will be a general partner in the new fund and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) will collaborate on the design of the new data centres
- Microsoft has been ramping up their commitments to data centres for artificial intelligence, previously entering into a multi billion dollar renewable energy deal with Brookfield (NYSE: BAM) to provide solar and wind energy to power new data centres
- BlackRock is not the first major asset management company to start taking bets on data centres, with Starwood Capital previously raising a purpose built fund for new data centre construction and Coatue recently investing into publicly traded Bitcoin mining company Hut8 (NASDAQ: HUT) to leverage their existing infrastructure for expanding into artificial intelligence cloud computing
The intrigue:
- One of the most critical inputs for constructing new data centres is copper, which has been seeing prices spike due to a lack of new large scale producing mines and a significant uptick in new demand
