Macquarie is to take a 15 percent stake in US firm Applied Digital’s high-performance computing business and invest up to US$5 billion (A$8.1 billion) in the company’s artificial intelligence data centres amid booming AI demand.
Shares of Applied Digital rose about 20 percent before the opening bell.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, providers of computing infrastructure like Applied Digital have been seeing heavy investment from companies looking to train their own AI models and get ahead of competitors.
Macquarie’s asset management arm has agreed to invest up to US$900 million in a data centre campus that Applied Digital is developing in North Dakota.
Dallas, Texas-based Applied Digital also has the right of first refusal to invest an additional US$4.1 billion in future company data centres for 30 months, the company said.
Applied Digital Chief Executive Wes Cummins said the deal provides the company with enough equity to construct data centres with high power demands.
The new funding will be used to repay debt Applied Digital took on to build the facilities in North Dakota and will allow it to recover over US$300 million of its equity investment in them, the firm said.
Applied Digital’s shares have more than tripled in the past two years as investors bet on AI firms and data centre providers to bring strong levels of growth.
Microsoft said earlier this month it would invest around US$80 billion in AI data centres in 2025 to meet growing computational needs.