Microsoft, BlackRock, and NVIDIA are the Big Names in GAIIP

Datacenter energy demand is the focus of a new fund involving Microsoft and investment firms BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners (a firm that is being bought by BlackRock for about $12.5 billion), and MGX, a technology investment firm based in the United Arab Emirates.

The group aims to grow an initial $30 billion pool of capital to $100 billion. And NVIDIA will have the ear of the partnership along the way, signaling its strong position in redesigning global hyperscaler and enterprise datacenters around accelerated computing.

The Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP), announced this week, will invest in projects and companies primarily within the U.S. and allied countries that improve the infrastructure efficiency of AI datacenters.

“Mobilizing private capital to build AI infrastructure like data centers and power will unlock a multi-trillion-dollar long-term investment opportunity,” said Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO and chairman, in the press release. “Data centers are the bedrock of the digital economy, and these investments will help power economic growth, create jobs, and drive AI technology innovation.”

A Power-ful Problem

The GAIIP's targeted issue is a big one. Datacenters consume about 1% of the world’s energy resources, which are becoming constrained as shortages of electricity, oil, and gas persist worldwide, particularly in areas experiencing geopolitical instability.

The issue is severe enough to have caught the attention of the White House, which on September 12 convened a roundtable including multiple government representatives and top executives from a range of companies, including Alphabet, AWS, Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. (Sam Altman of OpenAI and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA were among those present.)

Among other goals outlined at the meeting was the proposed creation of an “AI datacenter engagement team” at the U.S. Department of Energy to help datacenter operators with grants, loans, tax credits, and technical assistance in planning clean energy facilities.

NVIDIA’s Role Is Significant

NVIDIA’s advisory role in the GAIIP is significant given the company’s pitch that accelerated computing saves energy. This was a point stressed by CEO Jensen Huang during a keynote at Computex in Taiwan this past June.

“We can accelerate what used to take 100 units of time down to one unit of time…. But you only increase the power by a factor of three,” CEO Huang claimed in the keynote. In the same speech he pointed out several instances of dramatic savings in power resulting from deployment of the new Blackwell chip and other innovations.

What better platform for NVIDIA’s power-saving technologies in accelerated computing than GAIIP? The press release states that “NVIDIA will support GAIIP, offering its expertise in AI data centers and AI factories to benefit the AI ecosystem.” AI factories is a term used by Huang to describe datacenters specifically designed for AI workloads.

Strong Partners

The GAIIP partners could be powerful allies for NVIDIA. The three are significant players in worldwide investment in datacenters. BlackRock, with a market capitalization of $135 billion, handles multiple funds globally and has demonstrated interest in renewable energy through its Climate Infrastructure division. In July, Google invested in BlackRock portfolio company New Green Power, which is setting up solar energy sources in Taiwan for Google and its suppliers.

MGX is an investment company established in March 2024 by the President of the UAE’s Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology Council specifically to focus on: AI infrastructure (including datacenters); semiconductors, including chip design and manufacturing; and AI applications, models, robotics, and other technologies.

Interestingly, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in April 2024 in G42, an AI technology holding company based in the UAE. According to the press release, the investment “will enhance the UAE’s position as a global AI hub.”

Microsoft, of course, has aggressively invested billions elsewhere in AI, including nearly $13 billion in OpenAI. Indeed, it’s throwing money everywhere in support of AI technologies to grow the AI economy and fuel its own products and services. The confidence shown by the partners in the GAIIP could help Microsoft allay concerns that it, and its hyperscaler competitors, may be investing too heavily in AI.

And given its position as advisor, NVIDIA will have a say in how investments in AI factories might best be made.

Futuriom Take: The impact of the GAIIP on AI datacenter innovation could be significant and could further boost NVIDIA’s accelerated computing technologies, which NVIDIA claims reduce power consumption significantly in datacenters devoted to AI.