The ACS BlackRock Data Center partnership marks a major strategic shift for both companies, combining ACS’s global construction and engineering strength with BlackRock’s investment scale to address the surging demand for AI-ready digital infrastructure. The joint venture structure includes about €1 billion in initial capital from each partner, along with a variable payment of up to €1 billion tied to project commercialization milestones.
ACS will book a €100 million capital gain from the deal while still maintaining equal ownership with GIP, enabling the company to unlock value from its pipeline without giving up strategic control. This balance lets ACS continue shaping long-term development while benefiting financially as projects move from planning to operation.
The current ACS BlackRock Data Center pipeline represents 1.7 GW of capacity spread across multiple continents. It includes 278 MW underway in Spain, 220 MW in Australia, 300 MW in the United States, and another 300 MW in Chile. These projects reflect early steps in what could become one of the largest multi-regional digital infrastructure platforms in the world.
Beyond this committed portfolio, ACS is evaluating an additional 11 GW of potential developments across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. If market conditions, power availability, and customer commitments align, these projects could be added to the joint venture, significantly expanding the scale and geographic reach of the platform.
ACS Group CEO Juan Santamaría described the ACS BlackRock Data Center venture as a foundational step in the company’s evolution toward becoming a global leader in digital infrastructure ownership. He highlighted the advantages of pairing ACS’s development and construction capabilities with GIP’s expertise in energy, transport, and digital assets.
This combination creates an entity capable of delivering sustainable, high-performance data centers tailored for the extreme computational demands of artificial intelligence, cloud services, and edge computing. Santamaría emphasized that the partnership is designed to support AI growth responsibly, with strong focus on environmental performance and energy efficiency.
This collaboration also signals a strategic pivot for ACS itself. Historically known for large-scale construction contracts for clients such as Meta and Vantage, ACS is shifting from being a build-to-spec contractor to becoming an owner-operator of data center assets.
This transition means ACS can capture long-term value through leasing, selling, or operating facilities rather than only earning construction margins. The move reflects a broader industry trend where major engineering firms are entering asset ownership in digital infrastructure because of strong, predictable demand and multi-decade revenue potential.
BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners arm strengthens the ACS BlackRock Data Center venture with deep expertise in managing complex digital infrastructure assets. GIP oversees more than $100 billion in infrastructure investments, including notable positions in CyrusOne, Vantage Towers, and Mainova Webhouse.
BlackRock also established a $30 billion AI Infrastructure Partnership in 2024 with Microsoft and MGX, later joined by Kuwait Investment Authority. This background positions GIP as a powerful strategic partner with experience in hyperscale facilities, long-duration financing, and global expansion.
Financial projections indicate that the ACS BlackRock Data Center platform could ultimately reach €23 billion in total project value. This would include about €5 billion in equity contributions and an estimated €18 billion in debt financing, following typical infrastructure leverage models.
This approach allows the partnership to scale quickly, developing multiple sites in parallel and accelerating delivery timelines to match the unprecedented demand driven by AI and cloud workloads. The rapid rise of AI training and inference, which require far more power than traditional computing, is reshaping global electricity demand and intensifying competition for suitable data center sites.
ACS brings substantial construction experience to this effort. The company has delivered more than 5.5 GW of data center capacity through subsidiaries such as Turner Construction in the United States and through its involvement with Hochtief, CIMIC, and Leighton Asia.
Recent projects include developments in Aragon, a major campus in Fort Worth, Texas, and a 50 MW data center in Alcalá de Henares near Madrid. Hochtief PPP Solutions is also pushing sustainability boundaries with liquid-cooled wooden-edge data centers in Germany, with planned expansion into Austria and the United Kingdom.
The long-term success of the ACS BlackRock Data Center venture depends on navigating key challenges: securing sufficient power, expediting permitting, controlling construction costs, and maintaining competitive timelines in markets where hyperscalers and other infrastructure providers are aggressively expanding.
The partnership faces strong competition from major initiatives including Microsoft’s €10 billion data center plan in Portugal and Anthropic’s $50 billion U.S. investment blueprint. In this environment, advantages like site selection speed, power availability, and supply chain resilience will determine which players succeed.
Track the massive capital flows reshaping global data center infrastructure and the partnerships determining which players will dominate AI-era computing capacity, visit ainewstoday.org for comprehensive coverage of joint venture formations, development pipelines, construction innovations, and the strategic investments positioning infrastructure providers to capture value from artificial intelligence’s insatiable appetite for computational power!
