blackrock and microsoft to invest $30 billion in ai infrastructure
2024-09-18
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according to xinhua news agency, blackrock and microsoft announced on the 17th that they will jointly create an artificial intelligence investment fund to build data centers and energy facilities to meet the growing needs of the artificial intelligence field.
the fund will be launched by blackrock's global infrastructure partners and named "global artificial intelligence investment partners". it plans to raise $30 billion through private equity capital and may increase the fund size to $100 billion through debt financing. according to the financial times, this fund will become one of the largest investment tools on wall street.
global infrastructure partners, which focuses on infrastructure investment, was acquired by blackrock for $12.5 billion earlier this year, with the transaction scheduled to be completed in october.
according to a joint statement from blackrock and microsoft, mgx investments, which is backed by the united arab emirates, is also a partner in the fund. mgx was founded with capital from the uae sovereign wealth fund mubadala to promote the uae's development in the field of artificial intelligence.
the financial times said that the scale of electricity and digital infrastructure required to build artificial intelligence products is "astonishing," and it is expected that serious capacity bottlenecks will appear in the next few years. the international energy agency estimates that global data center electricity consumption may exceed 1,000 terawatt hours by 2026, more than double the level in 2022.
currently, one-third of the world's data centers are located in the united states, causing the first rapid growth in u.s. electricity demand in 20 years. a report by the american power strategy company shows that in the past year, the forecast for the growth rate of u.s. electricity demand in the next five years has almost doubled from 2.6% to 4.7%.
blackrock is a global money management giant, and energy is one of its priorities. earlier this year, microsoft agreed to invest $10 billion in a renewable power plant for canadian firm brookfield asset management.
edited by mao tianyu
