A consortium of investors has agreed to acquire Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie Asset Management for about $40 billion, the companies said Wednesday. Abu Dhabi’s MGX, BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners and members of the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership are buying 100% of the equity. The Kuwait Investment Authority, xAI and Temasek are additional participants. CNBC says it will be the largest global data center deal to date, while SiliconANGLE calls it one of the largest-ever acquisitions of data centers.

The AI Infrastructure Partnership was formed in September 2024 by BlackRock, MGX, Microsoft and Nvidia; Nvidia and xAI joined in March, with Temasek and the Kuwait Investment Authority also listed as additional participants. Aligned is its first investment, and the consortium frames the deal as a step toward deploying $30 billion in equity capital. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who chairs AIP, said the purchase furthers the group’s aim of building infrastructure for AI while giving clients a way into its growth.

Aligned, founded in 2013, operates 50 campuses across North and South America—Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Northern Virginia, plus sites in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico through its OData acquisition. It has more than 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity. Its CEO, Andrew Schaap, said the consortium’s reach across AI, energy and finance positions the company to scale faster. The transaction faces regulatory approvals and is expected to close late next year.

Analysts say the spending wave reflects the scramble for AI computing capacity. Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller says the spending wave is the AI industry’s equivalent of a gold rush, with companies hunting for computing capacity rather than precious metals, and says it will take time to see whether the investments pay off.