The info middle market is booming, pushed by AI demand. Simply final week, OpenAI stated that it plans to crew up with backers together with SoftBank to spend at the least $100 billion on knowledge middle infrastructure within the U.S. Microsoft aims to put around $80 billion towards AI infrastructure this yr, and rival tech giants have additionally upped their footprints.
Corporations like DataBank, which offer high-performance compute-ready knowledge facilities for enterprise shoppers, are the large winners within the race for extra compute. Living proof: DataBank on Thursday introduced that it raised $250 million in an funding from non-public fairness agency TJC and an extra $600 million in a secondary share provide.
Raul Okay. Martynek, DataBank’s CEO, stated in a press launch that the brand new capital “alerts each confidence in our technique and our confirmed capability to execute and scale.”
DataBank, based in 2005, was acquired in 2016 by a bunch of blue-chip traders led by DigitalBridge, an asset supervisor, and merged with a number of different knowledge middle operators. The corporate has expanded by acquisitions over time, in 2018 buying Indianapolis-based knowledge middle supplier Lightbound and in 2020 buying zColo’s U.S. and U.Okay. knowledge middle belongings.
DataBank claims to handle over 65 knowledge facilities throughout greater than 27 markets. Up to now yr and a half alone, the agency has raised $5 billion.
“We couldn’t be extra excited to associate with Raul, DataBank, and the opposite world-class digital infrastructure traders supporting DataBank’s strong development plans,” Eion Hu, a associate at TJC, stated in an announcement. “Knowledge facilities are the cornerstone of the digital transformation and synthetic intelligence, and we imagine DataBank is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the sustained demand for dependable, scalable, and energy-efficient infrastructure in an more and more data-driven world.”
In a sector adjoining to DataBank, there’s a booming market for “neocloud” startups like Crusoe and others constructing low-cost, on-demand clouds primarily for AI workloads.
CoreWeave, the GPU infrastructure supplier with several Big Tech partnerships, is valued at $19 billion. Lambda Labs final April secured a special-purpose financing car as much as $500 million. The nonprofit Voltage Park in October 2023 introduced it’s investing $500 million in GPU-backed knowledge facilities. And Collectively AI, a cloud GPU host that additionally conducts generative AI analysis, final March landed $106 million in a Salesforce-led spherical.
Per a McKinsey report, capital spending on procurement and set up of mechanical and electrical methods for knowledge facilities might eclipse $250 billion within the subsequent 5 years. That’s regardless of rising calls to look at the environmental externalities of knowledge facilities, together with their excessive water utilization.