A joint venture led by BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners and Abu Dhabi-based MGX said it has closed its $40 billion acquisition of Plano-based Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie Asset Management and will inject another $5 billion into the company to accelerate build-out for AI workloads. Bloomberg first reported the capital injection on July 21.
Deal Mechanics And Motivation
The Aligned buyout ranks among BlackRock's largest infrastructure investments and was among the five biggest M&A transactions of 2025 when the terms were first disclosed last October. The additional $5 billion is described as growth capital to expand power, land and construction pipeline. Aligned operates and is building more than 50 campuses and 78 data centers across the US, Chile, Brazil and Mexico, with over 6.4 GW of operational and planned power capacity. Its footprint spans Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix and Latin American markets, positioning the company squarely inside the fastest-growing US and cross-border AI compute corridors.
Why AI Compute Is Reshaping The Infrastructure Table
Generative AI's power appetite has pulled sovereign wealth funds, hyperscalers and infrastructure private equity into a race to acquire or develop hyperscale data centers. The Aligned deal follows an emerging $10B Meta-Anthropic compute lease and comes as MGX has committed to deploy up to $100 billion in AI infrastructure. BlackRock separately co-anchors the AI Infrastructure Partnership targeting up to $30 billion in equity for AI compute assets.
Local Politics Matter
Rapid data-center construction has begun to erode local support. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called for banning new data centers in rural areas and proposed statewide regulation, citing residential power price risk and Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid stability. Aligned's headquarters at 2800 Summit Avenue in Plano sits in a market that will need to balance the operator's expansion appetite with new state-level constraints. The politics — not the money — are increasingly the bottleneck. Related coverage: Microsoft-Mistral Azure sovereign AI and NVIDIA-Amkor $1.5B advanced packaging.
Reporting based on coverage from Bloomberg, The Real Deal and Reuters.