xAI & NVIDIA Join Microsoft, BlackRock & MGX For Their $30 Billion AI Data Center Project

The GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) world was set alight when President Donald Trump announced that OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX—with participation from Microsoft, Arm, and NVIDIA—would come together to boost AI (artificial intelligence) infrastructure in the country with a $500 billion project called Stargate.

With an initial immediate deployment of $100 billion and the remaining amount spread over the next four years, the investment would be directed towards building data centers and other necessary infrastructure for ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in the United States.

The move also came with changes to OpenAI’s partnership with its primary backer Microsoft, which would allow it to partner with other companies for funding, compute power, and more.

The move would also reduce Microsoft’s dependence on OpenAI, allowing it to focus on developing its own in-house AI models, including its complex reasoning and problem-solving MAI models.

However, before the Stargate announcement, Microsoft had joined another group of investors and technology companies in a project to drive investment in data centers and allied infrastructure needed to propel AI development.

The AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP)—initially called the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership—has attracted major capital and partner interest since its inception in September 2024, including BlackRock, BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), Microsoft, and MGX.

Now, AIP will see Grok developer xAI and GPU king NVIDIA join in, as per a press release by BlackRock.

The partnership will look to raise $30 billion from investors, asset owners, and corporations, and ultimately mobilize up to $100 billion in total investment potential when including debt financing. These investments will initially focus on the U.S., its partner countries, and the 38 OECD countries to drive AI innovation, economic expansion, and the advancement of critical digital and energy infrastructure.

NVIDIA (currently engaged in its GTC 2025 event), will act as a technical advisor to AIP, bringing in its expertise in accelerated computing and AI factories to help the cause.

“The addition of both NVIDIA and xAI, each a global AI technology leader, reinforces AIP’s commitment to scaling an open-architecture platform and fostering a broad ecosystem that supports a diverse range of partners on a non-exclusive basis,” read the release.

As such, NVIDIA, MGX, and Microsoft are part of both projects.


Ahead of this, GE Vernova and NextEra Energy will also collaborate with AIP to enhance energy efficiency solutions and infrastructure for AI data centers and enable supply chain planning, among working together on other avenues.

“In order to realize the full potential of Artificial Intelligence we must develop and support the energy infrastructure and data centers that will fuel this technology,” said John Ketchum, Chairman and CEO of NextEra Energy. “Our collaboration with GE Vernova and AIP is intended to get as many electrons onto the grid as quickly and most cost-effectively as possible.”

“Our company is focused on an all-of-the-above approach with our customers to meet this unprecedented demand, utilizing gas, nuclear, wind, and more, while continuing to drive innovation to reduce emissions,” said GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik.

This inclusion comes as tech conglomerates are looking for clean energy solutions to power their AI aspirations, including turning to nuclear energy through SMRs (small modular reactors). This includes Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and more. Even the U.S. government picked up on the trend.

The growing problems of the sudden rise in energy consumption reared its ugly head last summer when 60 data centers in Virginia’s Data Center Alley unexpectedly switched to on-site generators. This caused a massive surge in excess electricity that alarmed federal regulators and utility operators.

The incident exposed a major vulnerability in the U.S. power grid, as the unplanned disconnections of large-scale data centers could trigger cascading outages, leaving grid operators with the headache of figuring out how to effectively balance electricity supply and demand—something AIP’s new partnerships aim to address.

While top brass from all concerned companies have commented on the move, Elon Musk’s xAI remains the only one not to have provided a statement—a stance often adopted by the company.

Do you think xAI and NVIDIA’s inclusion in the Microsoft-BlackRock-MGX data center project—with the addition of Vernova and NextEra Energy—will allow this new consortium to challenge Project Stargate?

Let us know in the comments below!