The AI datacenter market is booming, with investments reaching record levels in 2024. The high demand for GPUs, now considered fungible assets, has enabled datacenters to secure massive loans using them as collateral. This trend has attracted significant investments from firms like Macquarie and Blackstone, with the latter planning a $12 billion AI datacenter in England. The potential for substantial returns on investment, as demonstrated by projections of $5.27 billion in revenues from a $1.5 billion datacenter investment, is driving this surge in funding.
Key takeaways:
- Macquarie plans to invest up to $5 billion in Applied Digital to finance new datacenter facilities, starting with an initial $900 million round of funding.
- Applied Digital aims to expand its high-performance computing capabilities, with plans to construct over two gigawatts of HPC datacenter capacity, including the Ellendale Campus in North Dakota.
- Macquarie's investment grants it a 15 percent stake in Applied's HPC business, with the datacenter operator retaining the remaining 85 percent share.
- The high demand for GPUs has made them fungible, allowing datacenters to use them as collateral for large loans, driving significant investment in the sector.