Brookfield Tees Up $10B AI Infrastructure Fund

Brookfield is betting that the artificial intelligence gold rush isn’t a bubble but an arms race — and it wants to control the real estate that powers it.

The Canadian investment giant is raising a $10 billion equity fund to build and buy the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence, from hyperscale data centers to dedicated power generation and chip manufacturing sites, the Wall Street Journal reported. Half the target is already spoken for thanks to heavyweight backers including Nvidia and the Kuwait Investment Authority.

Brookfield expects to use the equity, plus co-investments and debt, to assemble as much as $100 billion in AI infrastructure. Most of that capital will go toward ground-up development on raw land, an increasingly scarce commodity as developers chase sites with big power footprints near major metros.

Brookfield already inked a $5 billion partnership last month with Bloom Energy to deliver power solutions to data centers, and it’s working with France and Sweden on government-backed, secure AI infrastructure.

The push builds on Brookfield’s status as the world’s largest infrastructure investor with more than $100 billion already deployed into digital assets globally. Brookfield estimates that fully powering AI will demand $7 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next decade.

That projection helps explain why capital has flooded into the space. Blue Owl and other private-market players have been underwriting mega-campus data centers for Meta, Oracle and other hyperscalers, projects often priced in the tens of billions. The land, the electricity and the chips have all become strategic assets.

Brookfield also has a playbook for building thematic platforms. Its energy-transition strategy, launched in 2022, has become one of the firm’s most successful capital-raising efforts. Brookfield recently closed its second fund in that series at $20 billion.

Still, the broader market is flashing some caution. The Brookfield announcement lands after several days of stock-market weakness tied to worries of an AI bubble. Nvidia — both a beneficiary of the boom and an investor in its infrastructure — saw its shares soften ahead of earnings, when Jensen Huang’s firm posted a booming report.

Meanwhile, sovereign wealth funds continue to pour in; KIA also backed an AI joint venture involving BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, Microsoft and Nvidia.

— Holden Walter-Warner