Blackstone's Giant Data Center Bet

Big tech companies don’t report September-quarter earnings until the end of this month. But you don’t have to wait until then to get an update on the artificial intelligence data center gold rush that’s now underway. Instead, just tune in to Blackstone’s earnings call on Thursday.

The giant investment firm has emerged as one of the big global financiers of data centers—a key piece of the bricks and mortar needed to run chatbots and other forms of AI. Today, for instance, Reuters reported that the investment giant planned to invest $8.2 billion to develop data centers in Spain’s Aragon region, following similar moves in that area by Microsoft and Amazon. Early last month, Blackstone said it had agreed to buy a big data center developer in Asia Pacific at a value of $16 billion.