After Outbidding You on a Starter Home… BlackRock and the Saudis Spend $40B to Be ChatGPT’s Slumlord

Bah gawd, that’s BlackRock’s music…

After outbidding every single mother in the country for houses, the world’s biggest asset manager is apparently tired of inflating the real estate market (or maybe there are just no homes left to bid on). So Larry Fink’s empire is pivoting: forget 1,000 square foot ranch homes in Iowa… now they want to own the servers running your AI girlfriend.

BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners is reportedly in advanced talks to gobble up Aligned Data Centers in a deal worth about $40 billion. If that number sticks, it would rank as one of the five biggest deals of 2025, rubbing elbows with Chevron’s $53B takeover of Hess and Microsoft’s $69B splash for Activision Blizzard.

This isn’t BlackRock’s maiden voyage either. BlackRock already teamed up with KKR in 2021 to take CyrusOne private for $15 billion. Now, just a few years later, after catching a whiff of that AI smoke, they’re rolling up to Aligned’s doorstep with a check nearly triple the size. Zuck gets all the callouts, but he’s not the only AI junkie out in these streets.

And in case you’re wondering, BlackRock isn’t going in alone… they’ve brought their rich friends. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala… yes, the same sovereign wealth giant that bankrolls LIV Golf and now dabbles in AI through its MGX arm (which already backs OpenAI)... is sliding into this deal too. They’ve already cut checks to Aligned once, so this is clearly a “back for seconds” move.

Larry’s ambitions don’t stop at server racks. BlackRock has also been poking around AES Corp., a $38 billion power company. Because sure, owning data centers is cute, but if you’re serious about AI, you need the zap to keep them alive.

(Source: Bloomberg)

This deal isn’t exactly out of left field… ever since ChatGPT blew up, everyone and their hedge fund manager has been trying to buy a ticket to the AI circus. First it was chips (hi, Nvidia), then it was showering cash on AI startups (Anthropic, OpenAI, whoever could spell “neural net”), and now it’s the warehouses full of blinking servers that keep these compute-hungry models alive (data centers, I’m talking about data centers).

But just like the chipmakers which are now trading frothier than a rootbeer float, data center valuations are through the roof… even though AI is still waiting to fully go mainstream with actual, you know, revenues. As GIC’s Bryan Yeo put it: “If the technology doesn’t deliver, we’re in for a bubble.” Wow, thanks for the groundbreaking revelation… next you’ll tell me grass is green and Elon likes attention.

Still, Aligned isn’t some janky server farm wedged between a vape shop and a Domino’s. They’ve raised $12 billion in fresh funding, they’re in bed with D.C., and they sit at the center of what McKinsey thinks will be a $6.7 trillion AI infrastructure boom by 2030. There is a problem though, Houston: the U.S. construction industry is short 500,000 workers this year, with project backlogs already stretching 8.5 months. Even BlackRock can’t just drop $40 billion and magically conjure an army of electricians and HVAC techs out of thin air.

At $40 billion, this would be BlackRock’s big “we’re not just your boring ETF babysitter anymore” moment. And honestly? If Larry Fink wants to throw his cash at AI server farms instead of bidding $50k over asking on every sad little ranch house in the Midwest, we should all be grateful.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Microsoft as mentioned in the article.