Financial Association reported on March 20 (Editor: Liu Rui) As is well known, $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ is the largest supporter of the USA AI startup OpenAI, while $Blackrock (BLK.US)$ has an executive on the OpenAI Board of Directors. However, Microsoft and Blackrock have now partnered with one of OpenAI's main competitors – Musk's xAI.

Musk, Microsoft, Blackrock, and others have formed a new alliance.

On Wednesday Eastern Time, Microsoft and Blackrock announced that Elon Musk's xAI will join their "Global AI Infrastructure Investment" alliance to jointly build a $30 billion datacenter and Other AI Infrastructure. NVIDIA will also officially join the alliance - NVIDIA was designated as a technical advisor when it announced its membership last year.

Previously, Microsoft had invested about $13 billion in OpenAI, but at the same time, Microsoft has increasingly developed its own AI independent of this partnership. Earlier this month, reports revealed that Microsoft has created its own internal AI models and believes these models can compete with OpenAI.

It is worth mentioning that Musk is also one of the co-founders of OpenAI, but now he has become a public "archenemy" of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and has engaged in a lawsuit with OpenAI over the company's shift to a profit-oriented structure.

Microsoft and Blackrock stated that after xAI and NVIDIA join, their collaboration will be renamed AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), focusing on infrastructure investment (including energy projects), mainly in the USA, with some funds to be deployed in partner countries.

The alliance was jointly initiated by Blackrock and its Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), Microsoft, and the UAE investment institution MGX last year, indicating that they will seek to establish a $30 billion private equity capital and ultimately leverage up to $100 billion in potential investments.

The plan is expected to attract more investors. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink stated in a statement that clients, including pension and insurance companies, are eager for such long-term infrastructure projects.

The alliance stated that energy suppliers NextEra Energy Inc. and GE Vernova Inc. "have agreed to collaborate with AIP to accelerate the expansion of key and diversified energy solutions for AI datacenters." In January of this year, the two companies announced a partnership to capitalize on the surge in AI datacenter spending.

As the capital demand and investment enthusiasm for AI soar, a number of companies and investors have formed alliances to construct large datacenter parks. Recently, several companies, including SoftBank Group and OpenAI, have reached an agreement on an AI investment plan called "Interstellar Gateway" worth 100 billion dollars. MGX is also involved in the "Interstellar Gateway Project."

The AI investment boom has had a tremendous impact on global electrical utilities demand. It is projected that by 2034, the energy consumption of datacenters will exceed 1580 terawatt-hours, equivalent to the current electricity consumption of the entire nation of India.

Editor/jayden