Musk’s xAI joins BlackRock and Microsoft’s US$30b AI fund
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The news: Microsoft and BlackRock have brought Elon Musk’s xAI on board in their effort to build USD30 billion ($47.4 billion) worth of data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The numbers: The Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (AIP) will initially seek to unlock USD30 billion in capital from investors, asset owners, and corporations, which in turn will mobilise up to USD100 billion in total investment potential when including debt financing.
The context: Nvidia Corp, which was already named as a technical adviser to AIP when it launched last year is also formally joining the partnership. Details around the nature of AIP’s member commitments were not provided in Wednesday’s statement.
Launched by BlackRock and Microsoft in September last year, alongside Abu Dhabi AI investment fund MGX, the fund is aimed at addressing the intensive power and digital infrastructure demands required to build AI products. Other alliances between large AI players have emerged in the past year, with OpenAI recently committing to a similar AI partnership with Softbank for a USD100 billion investment plan dubbed Stargate.
A joint statement on the news explains that energy suppliers GE Vernova and NextEra Energy have agreed to collaborate with AIP to accelerate the scaling of critical and diverse energy solutions for AI data centres. GE Vernova will also work with AIP and its partners on supply chain planning and in delivering innovative and high efficiency energy solutions.
The addition of both NVIDIA and xAI reinforces AIP’s commitment to scaling an open-architecture platform and fostering a broad ecosystem that supports a diverse range of partners on a non-exclusive basis, the statement reads. AIP’s investments will primarily focus on the US as well as OECD and US partner countries.
Microsoft has invested around USD13 billion into key xAI competitor, OpenAI, and the tech giant has claimed that it has created AI models in-house that would stand up against OpenAI products.
What they said: Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said: “The global buildout of AI infrastructure will benefit every company and country that wants to achieve economic growth and unlock solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. AI factories built on NVIDIA’s full-stack AI infrastructure will convert data into intelligence that will accelerate every industry and help society achieve unimaginable breakthroughs.”
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft said: "AI infrastructure will play an increasingly critical role in driving economic growth across every industry and every region of the world.”
The sources: AIP press release, Bloomberg
