Thursday, October 9, 2025, Aligned Data Center in Northlake, Illinois, USA.
Christopher Dilts | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nvidia, microsoft, black rock and Elon Musk’s xAI are part of a consortium of investors that agreed to acquire Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion, the companies announced Wednesday.
Aligned designs and operates data centers and data campuses throughout the Americas and is owned by Macquarie Asset Management.
MGX of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, a global infrastructure partner of BlackRock and a member of the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), will acquire 100% of the company’s stock, making it the largest global data center transaction to date, according to a release.
AIP was founded by BlackRock, MGX, Microsoft, and Nvidia in September 2024 to accelerate investments in AI infrastructure. Kuwait Investment Authority, xAI and Temasek joined as additional participants.
The alignment transaction is AIP’s first investment and is a step towards the group’s goal of deploying $30 billion of equity capital.
“With this investment in the Alignment Data Center, we further our goal of providing the infrastructure needed to power the future of AI and provide our clients with an attractive opportunity to participate in the growth of AI,” Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO and Chairman of AIP, said in a statement.
AI companies are racing to build the infrastructure they think will be needed to meet the growing demand for the technology.
OpenAI, Nvidia, core weave and oracle They are closing ambitious data center and computing deals that require unprecedented amounts of capital and power.
Data centers are large facilities that house the hardware and equipment needed to run large-scale AI workloads and train models. Aligned currently operates 50 campuses with over 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity.
The partnership transaction is expected to close late next year and is still subject to regulatory approvals and other standard closing conditions.
Spotlight: Nvidia CEO Huang: AI requires bigger computers, entire data center can be done with one big computer
