
Asset management firm BlackRock has joined forces with Microsoft, Nvidia, and xAI to purchase Aligned Data Centers (Aligned) through an investment consortium called the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP). Aligned is one of the largest data center companies in the world, having a total of planned and operational capacity of 5GW spread across 50 campuses. According to the company, the data center operator is present globally, including sites in Northern Virginia, Chicago, Dallas, Ohio, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Sao Paulo (Brazil), Queretaro (Mexico), and Santiago (Chile).
Aside from AIP, other partners in the deal also included MGX, an AI investment firm owned and funded by the Abu Dhabi government in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), the Kuwait Investment Authority, and Temasek, a state-owned investment company owned by the Singapore Minister for Finance.