big bucks, no whammies —
Investment "goes beyond what any single company or government can finance."
If you haven't noticed by now, Big Tech companies have been making plans to invest in the infrastructure necessary to deliver generative AI products like ChatGPT (and beyond) to hundreds of millions of people around the world. That push involves building more AI-accelerating chips, more data centers, and even new nuclear plants to power those data centers, in some cases.
Along those lines, Microsoft, BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), and MGX announced a massive new AI investment partnership on Tuesday called the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP). The partnership initially aims to raise $30 billion in private equity capital, which could later turn into $100 billion in total investment when including debt financing.
The group will invest in data centers and supporting power infrastructure for AI development. "The capital spending needed for AI infrastructure and the new energy to power it goes beyond what any single company or government can finance," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement.
Microsoft's venture partners are notable for their deep pockets. BlackRock manages trillions in assets globally, and MGX, formed earlier this year, represents Abu Dhabi's strategic push into AI investments, backed by substantial sovereign wealth from the United Arab Emirates.
The new fund plans to invest mostly in the US, with some money going to partner countries. Nvidia will help out by sharing what it knows about building AI data centers, but Microsoft says it will support "an open architecture and broad ecosystem" that will provide infrastructure access to many companies using vendor-neutral standards.
An unyielding thirst for compute
The project comes at a time when demand for AI computing power (often called "compute" in the industry) has been growing rapidly, along with criticism about its power use. Training large language models and running inferences on them requires significant computational resources, which in turn demands more energy. Microsoft already powers OpenAI's ChatGPT with its Azure servers and has been upgrading its own data centers to handle increased demand.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, shared a statement on what he sees as the economic potential of the venture. "Data centers are the bedrock of the digital economy, and these investments will help power economic growth, create jobs, and drive AI technology innovation," he said.
While GAIIP's focus will primarily center on hardware and energy infrastructure, ripple effects from the initiative could be profound. Improved AI infrastructure may lead to faster development of next-generation AI models (such as the highly anticipated "GPT-5"—among AI enthusiasts anyway), speed up existing compute-hungry models (like OpenAI's new o1), and spark the development of new neural network-based applications across different industries.
However, such massive investment in AI infrastructure will also likely raise eyebrows about environmental impact because some critics believe AI is not worth the cost. There may be solutions down the road; a few AI data centers use 100 percent renewable energy for power and cooling, but those are still in the minority. In the meantime, nuclear power may bridge the gap, and Microsoft is trying to make it happen.