Background: Macquarie Group is the Sydney-based global investment bank and asset manager with over $940 billion in assets under management. Back in April 2018, its Asset Management arm bought into Aligned Data Centre, which at the time only had two facilities in Dallas and Phoenix.

What happened: Since that acquisition, Aligned Data Centre has exploded in scale. It's now grown to 50 data centres in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. Fast forward seven years and Macquarie Asset Management has just sold Aligned Data Centres for a massive $61 billion.

What else: The buyers? A consortium of AI heavyweights including Nvidia, Microsoft, BlackRock, and Temasek. Clearly, everyone from tech giants to big institutional investors wants a slice of the data centre pie.

What's the key learning?

💡AI isn’t just reshaping how we work… it’s reshaping what investors build and buy. The global boom in artificial intelligence has sparked massive demand for physical infrastructure like renewable energy systems, AI chips and data centres.

💡In fact, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet are expected to spend around $400 billion USD on AI infrastructure this year alone. As a result, data centre owners and investors are cashing in.

💡Aussie business Airtrunk sold to Blackstone and others for $24 billion, and Macquarie’s early bet on massive computing power is paying off, with five more data-centre businesses still in its portfolio.