Visitors browse the exhibition at the 'AWS (Amazon Web Services) AI Industry Week' held at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on the 15th. Yonhap News.
An AI infrastructure investment consortium involving the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, and AI chip giant Nvidia plans to acquire Aligned Data Centers, a data center design and operations company, for $40 billion (approximately 56 trillion won), Reuters reported on the 15th (local time).

The investment consortium participating in these companies, known as the 'AI Infrastructure Partnership' (AIP), announced the plan on the same day.

The consortium also includes Microsoft and xAI, an AI development and social media company.

Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and head of AIP, stated, "This investment further advances our goal of securing the infrastructure needed to power the future of AI."

This deal marks AIP's first investment and is expected to be finalized in the first half of next year.

The consortium plans to inject $30 billion in initial equity, and with the inclusion of debt, the total investment size could reach $100 billion.

Major investors in AIP also include the Kuwait Investment Authority and the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Aligned Data Centers designs, constructs, and operates data centers, currently working with hyperscalers and other major IT corporations.

As IT firms engage in fierce competition to build the most sophisticated AI models, the race to establish the high-cost infrastructure required to power AI technology is also intensifying, Reuters reported.

Yonhap News