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Macquarie will invest up to $5 billion in data centers being built by artificial-intelligence infrastructure company Applied Digital, adding to the Australian bank’s substantial AI-related investments.
The details
Macquarie’s asset-management arm agreed to invest up to $900 million in a data-center campus that Applied Digital is developing in North Dakota. Macquarie also has a right of first refusal to invest an additional $4.1 billion in future Applied Digital data centers for 30 months, aligning with the company’s expansion plans. The investment will come in the form of preferred equity.
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As part of the deal, Macquarie will get a 15% stake in Applied Digital’s high-performance computing business, with Applied Digital retaining the remaining 85%.
Applied Digital’s origins were in cryptocurrency mining and, like others in that field, it has pivoted to supplying computing power to the artificial-intelligence boom. The company started as Applied Blockchain before changing its name in 2022.
The Nadsaq-listed company’s stock has risen more than 40% in the past year amid the AI surge.
The rationale
The new funding will be used to repay debt Applied Digital took on to build the facilities in North Dakota and will allow it to recover over $300 million of its equity investment in them, the company said.
Wes Cummins, Applied Digital’s chief executive, said the deal also provides a significant amount of the equity needed to build data centers that require enormous amounts of power—more than two gigawatts.
AI chips and the infrastructure that supports them are expensive and power-hungry, throwing up major financing challenges for companies that want to participate in the boom.
The context
Investors have piled money into AI in the past couple of years, helping vault AI-chip giant Nvidia into the ranks of the world’s most valuable companies. Firms such as Blackstone have found ways to play the AI boom by investing in companies that serve the broader ecosystem, including providers of data storage and companies that lease out access to AI chips.
Macquarie led an asset-backed financing vehicle last year for Lambda, another AI-computing infrastructure company. It has also made large investments directly in data centers around the world.