The Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership — the consortium founded about a year ago by BlackRock, Abu Dhabi-based MGX, Microsoft and NVIDIA to expand capacity of AI infrastructure — announced on Oct. 15 the acquisition of Aligned Data Centers from funds managed by Australia’s Macquarie Asset Management.
The companies said the deal, which values Plano-based Aligned Data Centers at $40 billion, will fuel the expansion of next-generation cloud and AI infrastructure. Specific financial terms weren’t disclosed, but The Wall Street Journal reported the sale price as about $20 billion.
Sterlington, Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis advised on the deal.
Aligned Data Centers makes sustainable, ultra-efficient and highly adaptive data center infrastructure designed to power AI innovation at scale with 50 campuses and more than 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity across the U.S. and Latin America, including Northern Virginia, Chicago, Dallas, Ohio, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Sao Paulo, Queretaro, and Santiago.
The AI Infrastructure Partnership said Aligned Data Centers “has consistently met hyperscalers’ complex requirements, working hand-in-hand with customers to stay agile and innovate around their evolving needs.” The company’s “air, liquid, and hybrid cooling systems deliver maximum adaptability and support evolving high-density AI workloads, even in energy-constrained regions,” according to AIP.
The AI Infrastructure Partnership’s anchor investors include the state-owned Kuwait Investment Authority and Temasek, a Singapore state-owned investment firm.
David Robinson is general counsel and executive vice president for Aligned Data Centers, which received counsel from Sterlington partners Jeremy L. Goldstein (New York) and Christopher S. Harrison (New York), with Sterlington partners Kristy Fields (Houston) and Michael Gilligan (New York) and counsel Evan Coren also working on the deal. Fields joined Sterlington in February after three years as a partner in Simpson Thacher’s Houston office.
A global team of 40-plus lawyers at Latham & Watkins represented Macquarie Asset Management in the transaction, led by David Beller and Jason Webber in New York, with associates Daniel Weissman, Sofia Skara, Emma Giusto and Rheem Brooks. Houston partner Robert Brown and associate Stuart Cobb advised on data privacy and cybersecurity matters.
Other Latham & Watkins lawyers include: Tony Del Pino, Bradd Williamson, Jessica Cohen, Ece Gonulal, Stephanie Teicher, Amrita Mukherjee, Matthew Chase, Benjamin Hoekstra, Victoria Cappucci and David Langer in New York; Mario Richards, Carlos Ardila, Andrew Galdes, Matthew Gregory, Joseph Bargnesi, Faiza Hasan, Mandy Reeves, Caitlin Fitzpatrick, Doug Tifft, Arash Lotfi, Alice Chen and Peter Todaro in Washington, D.C.; Katharine Moir (Silicon Valley) and Ben Bouwman in San Francisco; Megan Ampe and Ana O’Brien in Los Angeles; Jana Dammann de Chapto in Hamburg; Max Hauser, Judith Jacop, Enno Mensching, and Helena Hofmann in Frankfurt; Niklas Brüggemann in Munich; and Molly Nelson, Nineveh Alkhas and Dustin Paige in Chicago; with Elizabeth Duncan in Boston.
Kirkland & Ellis was outside legal counsel for the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership consortium of buyers.
The Kirkland team was led by Melissa Kalka (Dallas), Andrew Calder (Houston) and John Kaercher (Austin). Other Kirkland lawyers include: Blake Longoria (Houston), Izaak Lustgarten (New York), Kersten Kober (Dallas), David Wheat (Dallas/Houston), Joseph Tootle (New York), Steve Butler (Austin/Houston), Joe Tobias (Dallas), Mary Kogut (Houston), Kelly Mellecker (New York), Chad Davis (Dallas), Kimberly McGrath (Chicago), Rob Fowler (Houston), Katherine Nemeth (Houston), Justin Coddington (Houston), Drew Stuyvenberg (Washington, D.C.), Andrew DeVore (Washington, D.C.) and Jonathan Kidwell (Dallas).