(Sept 18): BlackRock Inc and Microsoft Corp are teaming up on one of the largest efforts to date to bankroll the build-out of data warehouses and energy infrastructure behind the boom in artificial intelligence (AI).

The companies, along with the United Arab Emirates’ MGX investment vehicle, will seek US$30 billion (RM127.85 billion) of private equity capital over time for the strategy, which will then leverage the money to as much as US$100 billion in potential investments, the companies announced Tuesday.

“The need to build out data centres globally is multi-trillions of dollars to finance,” BlackRock chief executive officer Larry Fink said in an interview, adding that the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership has been months in the making. “This is just a great example of the capital markets building out infrastructure and building out the opportunities and new technologies.”

The infrastructure investments — including energy projects — will be mostly in the US, with a portion of the funds to be deployed in US partner countries, the companies said in a statement. The plan includes bringing on additional investors, and pensions and insurers are eager for such long-term infrastructure investments, Fink said.

“We don’t believe it will be a difficult task,” he said of raising the money.

The group includes Bayo Ogunlesi’s Global Infrastructure Partners, the money manager BlackRock is acquiring for about US$12.5 billion, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, which was created this year specifically to invest in AI, and Nvidia Corp, the chipmaker that will support the coalition with its expertise in AI data centres and factories. Nvidia has poured money into creating software, networking and other pieces of technology that it says are essential to quickly putting together complete AI-systems.

“The investment opportunity is real and the investment need is even greater,” Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of Microsoft, said in the interview. AI “is the next general purpose technology that will fuel growth across every sector of the economy both in the United States and abroad.”

The firms have already discussed the plans with US lawmakers and regulators, Smith said.

Microsoft has invested US$13 billion in AI research lab OpenAI and is overhauling its entire product line around AI features. The software company is dramatically expanding its own spending on data centres 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 centre capacity.

Electricity usage

Energy producers across the US are racing to meet a surge in demand from power-hungry AI data centres, 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 centres to the power grid, with the time period in Virginia’s Data Center Alley stretching to as much as seven years.

“It’s clear today that the availability of power is one of the constraints on building not just data centres but electrification in general,” Ogunlesi said in the interview. “Power generation in the US has not been growing dramatically, so we will have to significantly increase the pace at which we develop new renewable power plants.”

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.

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