Di Yi Cai Jing Zi Xun·2025-10-15 23:50Core Insights - An investment group including BlackRock and NVIDIA announced the acquisition of Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie for a total value of $40 billion [2][3] - The investment alliance, named the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), aims to initially invest $30 billion in equity capital, with total funding potentially reaching $100 billion when including debt financing [2][3] - This acquisition marks AIP's first investment since its formation, with the deal expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval [3] Company Overview - Aligned Data Centers specializes in designing, building, and operating data centers for large-scale tech companies and emerging cloud service providers, with a portfolio of 50 data center campuses and over 5 gigawatts of computing capacity [3][4] - The company recently completed a $12 billion financing round, one of the largest private capital transactions in the data center industry [4] - Post-acquisition, Aligned Data Centers will remain headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and continue to be led by CEO Andrew Schaap [5] Industry Context - The expansion of AI infrastructure is capital-intensive, attracting significant investments from tech giants, startups, private equity funds, and infrastructure funds, with estimates suggesting that major cloud service companies will spend around $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year [3] - OpenAI has recently announced agreements to secure approximately 26 gigawatts of computing power, sufficient to meet the electricity needs of about 20 million U.S. households [3]