Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE:BAM) has joined NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) and five major financial institutions to establish AI compute financing platforms targeting more than US$500 billion (around $708.7 billion) in third-party capital.
NVIDIA has signed memorandums of understanding with Brookfield, Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO), BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), Blackstone (NYSE:BX), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), and KKR (NYSE:KKR).
The parties plan to create independently underwritten pools of capital to finance AI infrastructure using NVIDIA’s computing technology and software.
NVIDIA says the proposed platforms would give its customers, including AI laboratories, enterprises, and cloud providers, access to large-scale financing at what it describes as attractive rates.
The chip maker expects the platforms to support hardware sales and software adoption while allowing investors to earn revenue linked to the long-term use of computing infrastructure.
Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt says the partnership aligns with the asset manager’s strategy of investing in the infrastructure supporting AI adoption.
“As our strategic partner, NVIDIA is enabling us to scale AI factories. We are excited about further collaboration to build and fund the backbone of AI globally,” Flatt says.
“With demand for large-scale AI compute growing significantly as adoption scales across industries, compute is fast becoming the essential layer of infrastructure and a core pillar of the Brookfield AI infrastructure strategy.”
Brookfield’s involvement follows a separate US$605 million debt financing it led for 5C Group, announced on the same day.
The funding will support the acquisition and construction of 5C’s Memphis AI data centre campus in the US, as well as the development and expansion of sites in Ohio and Phoenix. It takes the equity and debt capital secured by 5C to more than US$1.4 billion.
5C develops large-scale campuses integrating computing equipment, power, cooling, networking, software, and operations. Its development pipeline includes more than 1.5 gigawatts of planned capacity.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says the partnerships reflect the evolution of computing technology into an infrastructure asset that can be financed over its operating life.
“We began by building chips; today, we are helping create a new class of productive, investable infrastructure: AI factories,” Huang says.
NVIDIA says its technology can be transferred between customers and operators and updated through its CUDA software platform, potentially extending its useful life. These characteristics underpin the companies’ plans to attract long-term institutional capital.
Brookfield manages more than US$1 trillion in assets across infrastructure, energy, private equity, real estate, and credit.
The partnerships remain subject to the parties executing final agreements.
Write to France Pinzon at Mining.com.au
Images: Brookfield Asset Management
