When financial giants and tech leaders chip in $40 billion for a company that owns data centers, it's no longer just an investment—it's a signal of how the future is structured. The wealth and power of the artificial intelligence era are measured not only in kilobytes and algorithms but also in gigawatts of energy and millions of cubic meters of cooling water.
In October 2025, a consortium led by BlackRock announced the acquisition of Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion—the largest deal in the history of the global data center market. The agreement included BlackRock through Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft, NVIDIA, the Emirati MGX, and Kuwait Investment Authority. This marked the first investment by the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership—a global fund established in September 2024 by BlackRock, GIP, MGX, and Microsoft with the goal of investing $30 billion in AI infrastructure (with the potential to raise up to $100 billion including debt). By March 2025, NVIDIA, xAI, Temasek, and Kuwait Investment Authority had joined the partnership, strengthening the platform's technological leadership.
Aligned boasts a portfolio of 51 data centers with a total capacity of over 6.4 gigawatts across the USA, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico—from Northern Virginia to San Francisco, from Texas to Mexico and South America. The consortium has allocated an additional $5 billion for expansion and scaling. The company's management, led by CEO Andrew Schaap, will remain in their positions and continue to oversee operations from Dallas.
Behind the visible figures lie the irreconcilable interests of four worlds. BlackRock seeks stable returns for its clients—pension funds and investment portfolios whose future payouts will depend on Aligned's success. Microsoft secures critical access to the computing resources necessary for its cloud services and its own AI ambitions. NVIDIA strengthens the connection between the chips it manufactures and the infrastructure where they operate, shaping its ecosystem. And MGX helps the UAE diversify its oil wealth into the digital economy of the future. They all understand one thing: without gigawatts of new data centers, modern AI simply cannot take off.
However, beneath the upward race lies a growing shadow side. According to projections from the International Energy Agency, electricity consumption by data centers in the USA will grow from 183 terawatt-hours in 2024 by approximately 133% by 2030, reaching about 426 terawatt-hours. In 2024, data centers consumed about 4% of American electricity; by 2030, this share could rise to 9–10% of projected consumption.
Water demand will grow exponentially—two to four times over the next decade. On the scale of the global energy market, this means that the power of AI centers will account for nearly half of all the growth in electricity demand in the USA until 2030.
New York State, facing this reality, imposed the first moratorium in the USA in July 2026 on the construction of large hyperscale data centers with a capacity exceeding 50 megawatts. The moratorium will last for one year while the state develops new environmental standards.
The reason is simple and resonates with voters: residents complain about surging electricity bills, depletion of water resources, water and air pollution, increasing noise, and strain on local infrastructure. This is the first state in the country to take such a step, although more than 30 states are already considering similar legislation, and over 100 localities already have local moratoriums in place.
For the ordinary investor, this deal is not an abstract piece of news but a matter of personal financial security. If you have invested your savings in a pension fund through BlackRock or its partners, you are now an indirect owner of Aligned Data Centers. Your future pension partially depends on how successfully this company manages the energy crisis the country is heading towards. Investing in AI today means understanding not only neural networks and LLMs but also the real wires, transformers, turbines, and rivers that power them. It means calculating the consequences not only for your portfolio but also for the neighboring communities that finance your profits.
There's an old saying: "Water flows where it's lowest." In the world of big capital, it is increasingly flowing where the demand for computation is highest. The question is, who will ultimately pay the price for this race—the investors who gain access to scarce resources, or the local communities living next to giant server farms and seeing their electricity bills rise every month.
