BlackRock, Nvidia, Microsoft, and xAI just bought $40 billion in data centers.

BlackRock, Nvidia, Microsoft, and xAI just bought $40 billion in data centers. To lease back to OpenAI, Google, and Meta. Their competitors who are also their partners... The fiber optics bubble of 2000 looks quaint by comparison 👇

The consortium acquired Aligned Data Centers' 50 campuses across the Americas.

5 gigawatts of current capacity. Plans to add 20 gigawatts per year globally (!!).

The circular money flows that should concern everyone:

The same companies building AI models are now buying the infrastructure to house them to lease back to their competitors (who are also their investors and partners).

Larry Fink told the Financial Times this keeps data centers off tech companies' balance sheets.

Meanwhile, every AI company is scrambling for compute:

Meta dropping $1.5 billion on an El Paso facility. Poolside and CoreWeave building a 2-gigawatt Texas center.

When BlackRock controls the power grid through private equity acquisitions and the data center infrastructure through consortiums...

Who exactly is competing with whom?

This is not a "free market" in the slightest.

Abu Dhabi's MGX, Kuwait Investment Authority, and Temasek are also funding this.

International money flowing into American AI infrastructure controlled by the same handful of corporations.

If you're an AI startup needing compute, you are basically paying the giants who can price you out tomorrow.

And if you're building competing models, you're 100% renting infrastructure from your rivals who will own your from day 1.

But there will likely be no more competing models at scale anyway. Just a handful of giant corporations who work together.

This makes the early 2000s fiber optics circular investing look like amateur hour.

At least then the infrastructure was physically distributed.

Now it's 20 gigawatts per year controlled by the same consortium that decides who gets access.

This is a Federal Reserve type moment for the future of compute.

All happening in a matter of weeks behind closed doors (much like it did on Jekyll Island).

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