A consortium made up of the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), MGX and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) has agreed to acquire 100 per cent equity of Aligned Data Centres, in a move expected to boost AI infrastructure globally.
The acquisition of Aligned Data Centres, one of the world’s fastest-growing digital infrastructure developers, was made from Macquarie Asset Management and other co-investors, Abu Dhabi AI investment firm MGX said in a statement on Wednesday.
The transaction, giving Aligned an enterprise value of approximately $40 billion, is one of the largest private infrastructure deals in the digital and AI sectors.
Collectively referred to as AIP Partners, the consortium aims to position Aligned as a cornerstone of next-generation compute infrastructure, enabling large-scale AI workloads across North and Latin America, MGX said.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026.
AIP was established last year by BlackRock, GIP, MGX, Microsoft and Nvidia to channel institutional capital into the infrastructure that underpins AI and high-performance computing. Its mission is to deploy $30 billion in equity, potentially reaching $100 billion including debt, to fund the global expansion of digital capacity.
For Ahmed Yahia, managing director and chief executive of MGX and vice chairman of AIP, the Aligned acquisition marks a defining step in that plan.
“This is one of the top three hyperscale AI infrastructure companies in the US and certainly globally,” he told The National, noting that its $40 billion enterprise value makes it “the largest private equity digital infrastructure transaction on record”.
Scale, reliability and strategic alignment
Mr Yahia outlined three features that made Aligned a fit for the consortium. “The first one is scale. This company, Aligned Data Centres, has the ability to build gigawatt-type sites, which is critical to be able to scale compute infrastructure in a cost-efficient way.”
He claimed that there are only four or five such platforms in the US and globally.
Moreover, “this is a company that has been building largely for the hyperscalers”, he said. “In fact, all hyperscalers are their customers, and they account for more than 80 per cent of their business.”
These relationships, he said, “are effectively building most of the infrastructure of the future”.
MGX and AIP are already closely linked to the global AI ecosystem, Mr Yahia noted. “We already have partnerships in those areas … whether it's ourselves, whether it's BlackRock or GIP, we have partnerships with OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic and all the foundational players.”
The Aligned acquisition comes amid a boom in AI infrastructure in the UAE and globally, with announcements such as the Stargate initiative.
In May, G42 teamed up with OpenAI, Oracle and Nvidia, alongside SoftBank Group to set up Stargate UAE, a one-gigawatt computing cluster that will operate in the emirate's 5GW UAE-US AI Campus.
About 300 megawatts of capacity at the campus is expected to come online in 2026, Andrew Jackson, group chief AI officer at G42, said at the Gitex Global technology exhibition on Tuesday.
“Stargate is an initiative – it’s not a company,” Mr Yahia said. Khazna Data Centres, a G42 company, will contribute and participate in the construction of Stargate, he said.
“We have, in effect, five platforms for our AI infrastructure portfolio: Vantage, Aligned, Khazna and the AI Campus, and one partnership vehicle that can invest across the board or in new assets.”
Mr Yahia said the company views these global investments as part of the same infrastructure fabric driving the AI economy across continents.
“We bring an end-to-end view of the AI play. GIP brings tremendous experience in infrastructure, whether power, traditional or now digital infrastructure. BlackRock brings the scale of capital critical to this industry, and Microsoft, xAI and Nvidia bring the technology expertise and the offtake.”
These are strategic partners as they are end users of the infrastructure, he added.
Looking ahead, Mr Yahia cited estimates that more than $1 trillion per year in required capital spending for global AI infrastructure buildout.
managing director and chief executive of MGX
Capital deployment and the value chain
Mr Yahia expects the consortium’s investment to unleash substantial capital deployment and economic activity over the next five years.
“You’re talking about billions … this number could be as high as $5 to $10 billion and I’m talking about equity, not debt.”
The investments will generate jobs across the value chain, from construction and electrical engineering to software optimisation.
“These data centres are effectively the infrastructure of the 21st century,” he said. “If you don’t have logistics, you can’t have manufacturing. Similarly, if you don’t have digital infrastructure, you can’t have AI innovation.”
Aligned’s reputation for advanced cooling and energy-efficient systems also aligns with MGX’s investment thesis. “It’s critical,” Mr Yahia said of sustainability. “When you think about the global capacity requirements of 170 to 180 gigawatts of data centre installed capacity by 2030 that requires about 200 to 220 gigawatts of power.”
He added that AIP and its partners are working to ensure that data centre power generation does not strain existing grids.
“One of the things that we’re working on collectively with our partners … is to build capacity that’s captive to these data centres, so that there is no trade-off or pressure from a pricing or availability perspective for the consumer.”
