BlackRock's $40 Billion Bid for Aligned Data Centers: A Strategic Move in the AI Boom

At the start of the year, a lesser-known infrastructure company called Aligned Data Centers managed to pull off a $12 billion fundraise—more than some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence startups have been able to secure in a single round. The goal was to dramatically expand its footprint to support the surging demand for the facilities that power AI systems.

Nine months later, with much of that build-out still in the works, Aligned is in advanced discussions to be acquired by BlackRock Inc.’s Global Infrastructure Partners in a $40 billion deal. It’s on pace to be one of the largest transactions of the year and potentially the biggest ever for any data center company.

The takeover talks, which Bloomberg News reported late Thursday citing people familiar with the matter, are indicative of just how much money investors are willing to throw at companies viewed as integral for the AI boom. According to a Goldman Sachs report issued Thursday, AI-related companies have accounted for $141 billion in corporate credit issuance so far this year, already eclipsing the $127 billion in total debt last year.

As tech companies say they’re prepared to spend hundreds of billions, if not trillions, on physical infrastructure for AI, there’s growing demand for firms like Aligned that promise to meet those needs. That’s true even if most of Aligned’s data center capacity—and the revenue expected from it—is still in the planning stages.

“They have a lot of planned activity,” Ari Klein, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said about Aligned in particular. “You’re probably seeing companies paying up for that planned activity, or what could come.”

Founded in 2013, nearly a decade before the generative AI boom, Aligned has long focused on providing custom data centers for businesses, with an emphasis on efficiency and sustainability. The company is backed by Macquarie Asset Management and has 78 data centers under management or in development across the Americas, according to its website.

As with other data center providers, Aligned has come under new pressure to build more and bigger data centers in recent years for AI. In January, Aligned said it had raised $12 billion in equity and debt to speed up its plans to build out 5 gigawatts of data center capacity, or enough to power half of New York City on a hot day.

The investment was intended to help Aligned “seize opportunities driven by the surging demand for AI-ready infrastructure,” said Andrew Schaap, the company’s chief executive officer, in a social media post at the time. “Aligned is ready to meet this moment.”

The only challenge is that data centers—and all the infrastructure, including power supplies to support them—take time. Currently, Aligned has just over 600 megawatts of data center capacity that’s live, with another 700 megawatts of capacity under construction, according to DC Byte, a market intelligence firm that tracks the industry. Still, the combined capacity makes Aligned a “decent-sized operation,” according to DC Byte founder Edward Galvin.

Coreweave Inc., a cloud provider that has struck deals with OpenAI and Nvidia Corp., has 470 megawatts of live capacity, according to public filings, with much more planned. CoreWeave reported just over $1.91 billion in revenue in 2024. And while Aligned is in talks to sell potentially for $40 billion, Coreweave has a market value of more than $65 billion.

Aligned has not publicly disclosed its sales figures. If it charged about $210 per kilowatt per month, the industry standard for data center pricing according to commercial real estate services firm CBRE, Aligned’s annual revenue would be nearly $1.6 billion. That figure would rise to $3.4 billion, including the capacity under construction.

By comparison, Fermi Inc., a real estate investment trust looking to draw data center tenants, saw its market value top $19 billion in its public debut this week. The company, co-founded by former US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, has no revenue—a sign of the frothy market for any business tied to the AI infrastructure boom.

On its website, Aligned said its customers have included Nutanix Inc., a cloud software company, Datto, an IT provider, as well as an unnamed government agency and multinational fintech company, among others.

Aligned is also developing a new data center in Texas for Lambda Inc., a cloud infrastructure company that’s backed by Nvidia. The data center is still under construction.