A consortium led by BlackRock (NYSE: BLK, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is set to acquire Aligned Data Centers (private). The $40 billion transaction marks one of the largest data center deals ever, highlighting the escalating race to build the digital infrastructure necessary to fuel artificial intelligence (AI) advancements.
Aligned Data Centers specializes in designing, building, and operating highly efficient data campuses primarily across the U.S. and Latin America. The company currently runs about 50 campuses with over 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity, including strategic locations like Northern Virginia, Dallas, Chicago, and spots in Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. These data centers serve hyperscalers, neocloud providers, and enterprises requiring vast computing power for AI, cloud computing, and high-performance workloads.
The deal emerges from the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), a coalition founded in 2024 by BlackRock, Nvidia, Microsoft, and MGX, an AI investment firm created by Mubadala Investment Co. AIP’s mission is to mobilize capital to meet the surging demand for AI infrastructure. This acquisition represents its first investment, with an initial $30 billion equity deployment target and potential growth to $100 billion including debt financing. Other notable investors include the Kuwait Investment Authority and Singapore’s Temasek.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, chairman of AIP, emphasized the importance of infrastructure to power AI’s future, noting that the partnership aims to accelerate growth opportunities in this critical sector. Aligned’s CEO, Andrew Schaap, expressed confidence that the consortium’s financial backing and expertise would help scale the company’s innovative, sustainable data centers more rapidly.
This purchase reflects broad industry trends where tech giants and investors aggressively expand data center capacity to meet exponential AI computing needs. Earlier this year, Aligned raised $12 billion in private capital, reflecting the capital-intensive nature of deploying AI infrastructure. Nvidia itself has announced plans to invest up to $100 billion with OpenAI, and OpenAI recently secured a 6-gigawatt supply agreement for AI chips with AMD, signifying massive scaling in data infrastructure investments.
The acquisition is scheduled to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Aligned will continue operations from its Dallas headquarters and retain its leadership team.
The scale and ambition of this consortium’s move underscore how fundamental robust, sustainable data infrastructure is becoming to global economic growth and AI innovation. As AI workloads demand unprecedented computing resources, firms with capabilities to deliver high-capacity, energy-efficient data campuses are attracting significant capital commitments. This buyout signals investor conviction in Aligned’s ability to navigate this fast-growing market, leveraging its technological edge and footprint in key digital hubs.
The Aligned acquisition is more than a single transaction; it’s a signpost for the future of AI-ready real estate and data infrastructure, where competition to serve AI’s insatiable appetite is intensifying. With cloud providers planning to spend hundreds of billions this year building out AI-specific capacity, the value of companies like Aligned, and the partners backing them, is expected to rise accordingly.
The consortium’s approach to deploying capital and managing operational scaling challenges over the coming year will be closely observed. Its combination of financial strength and data center expertise could establish a new benchmark for infrastructure investments driving the AI revolution.
