Macquarie spends $8b to ride predicted artificial intelligence-fuelled, US data boom

Australia’s Macquarie is getting in on US data centre hype with a $US5 billion ($8b) investment in NASDAQ-listed Applied Digital, calling out the sector as a “highly attractive opportunity”.

Macquarie’s asset management arm will spend an initial $US900 million ($1.4b) to finish a high-powered computer data centre campus Applied Digital it has been building in Ellendale, North Dakota since 2022.

Macquarie will also have first dibs to invest a remaining $US4.1b ($6.6b) in future projects the Dallas headquartered company builds in the US. The bank will also own 15 per cent of Applied Digital’s computing business.

Anton Moldan, who is the senior managing director of Macquarie Asset Management, said the campus being built at Ellendale as well as Applied’s presence in the US made it a compelling opportunity.

“Applied Digital has a differentiated strategy with access to a unique near-term power portfolio across North America in markets attractive for computing needs which address the most demanding AI and other HPC (high-powered computing) applications at scale,” he said

“With our global experience as an owner and manager of data centre platforms, we see this as highly attractive opportunity to help build an industry-leading HPC data center company well positioned in these high growth segments of the market.”

Chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake picked out data centres as a big investment tenet for the bank at Macquarie’s annual conference in Sydney last year.

She said artificial intelligence was driving huge demand for data centres and that there was going to be “massive amounts of data” that needed storage.

“The training of ChatGPT requires huge amounts of energy so these are sectors which are doing to structurally grow a heck of a lot and we’re putting a lot of effort into that” the CEO said in May last year.

It comes as Telstra announced it would be bringing in multinational consultant Accenture to roll out more artificial intelligence within the listed telco’s operations.

Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady assured the change would help the company deliver “seamless connectivity and better experiences for customers.”

Before Applied Digital, Macquarie had a controlling stake in Asia Pacific data centre company AirTrunk up until it was sold to Blackstone in a blockbuster $24 billion in late 2024.

Macquarie had been in that business since 2020 and had over four years built out from five data centres to 11.

Applied Digital’s chief executive and chair Wes Cummins said the new investment from Macquarie poised the business for “transformative progress”.

“We believe this expanded relationship with MAM positions Applied Digital for significant growth in the industry, establishing Applied Digital as one of the fastest-growing HPC data centre owners, operators and developers in the United States.”

President-elect Donald Trump — due to be inaugurated in less than a week — recently announced a $US20b ($32.2) foreign investment to build new data centres in the US.

The spend will be driven by an Emirati billionaire property developer across Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana, according to a January 7 report by CNBC.