Nvidia and Elon Musk's Xai have joined a consortium backed by Microsoft, Investment Fund MGX and BlackRock to expand the US AI infrastructure, companies said Wednesday that global competition to dominate the emerging technology will be strengthened.
Formed last year with the goal of investing more than $30 billion in AI-related projects, the group is one of the biggest commitments to bankroll data centers and energy facilities needed to power AI applications such as ChatGpt.
This addition comes two months after President Trump announced Stargate. Stargate is a private sector AI infrastructure initiative backed by Softbank Group, Openai and Oracle, and has planned to mobilize up to $500 billion.
Investors have committed $100 billion for immediate deployment, with the rest expected over the next four years.
The consortium, which includes BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners, was renamed the AI Infrastructure Partnership on Wednesday. Nvidia, a technical advisor, will continue in that role.
Training AI models and processing data at large scale requires enormous computing power that increases energy consumption. To meet demand, tech companies deploy thousands of chips in clusters, driving a surge in specialized data centers.
To fund computing and electricity needs, the consortium aims to raise funds from investors, asset owners and businesses with the goal of mobilizing up to $100 billion, including debt financing.
“AIP has attracted significant capital and partner interest since its inception in September,” the group said, but did not disclose the total funds it has raised so far.
Ge Vernova and utility company Nextera Energy also said they will be part of the group. The RenewableEnergy Company added that it will tackle supply chain planning and highly efficient energy solutions.
AIP said its investment will also focus on US partners and economic cooperation and development agencies.
