A consortium comprising Microsoft and BlackRock aims to amass $100 billion to finance the construction of AI data centers and power infrastructure.

• The Global Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Investment Partnership aims to secure $30 billion for new and existing data centers.
• The $100 billion fundraising will also be utilized to invest in the energy infrastructure necessary to power AI workloads.
• Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, stated that the initiative unites financial and industry leaders to construct the infrastructure of tomorrow and power it in an eco-friendly manner.

A group of companies, including and , are collaborating to develop data centers for artificial intelligence and the energy infrastructure to power them, with a potential investment of up to $100 billion.

The Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP), announced in a press release on Tuesday, includes companies such as Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), an infrastructure investor being acquired by BlackRock, and MGX, a tech investor in the United Arab Emirates.

"Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that the company is dedicated to utilizing AI to drive innovation and growth in all sectors of the economy. He emphasized that the initiative aims to unite financial and industry leaders in constructing the infrastructure of the future and powering it in a sustainable manner."

The objective of the group is to gather $30 billion in initial capital, with the ultimate aim of securing up to $100 billion, including through debt financing.

New data centers are being constructed by tech companies to house GPUs capable of running generative AI models, such as those used by OpenAI's ChatGPT. However, the high power consumption of these GPUs has resulted in a bottleneck in the demand for new facilities.

Microsoft's investment is in addition to the capital expenditures required to support the expansion of its Azure public cloud infrastructure, which provides OpenAI and other AI customers. Microsoft announced in July that its fiscal fourth-quarter capital spending, including assets acquired under finance leases, totaled $19 billion.

Last week, BlackRock announced that it expects the deal to close on Oct. 1, after announcing in January its intent to acquire GIP for $3 billion in cash and around 12 million shares of BlackRock common stock.

In March, MGX was launched with Mubadala and G42 as founding partners.

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