Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.one of the world’s largest alternative investment management firms, could become an unlikely rival to cloud infrastructure giants such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
A report in The information yesterday, suggested that it is considering launching a cloud computing company that would rent artificial intelligence chips directly to customers. It would operate a business model capable of reducing the costs of building and operating AI data centers, the report added.
The new company would be operated by a Brookfield subsidiary called Radiant and is linked to a new $100 billion AI infrastructure program that has been announcement in November. This program is supported by Brookfield’s Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Fund, which has already committed $10 billion to the initiative, half of which comes from a group of institutional and industry partners, including chip giant Nvidia Corp.
The fund is supporting new data center projects in France, Qatar and Sweden, and Radiant would benefit from a first call on the capacity of these new sites, an anonymous source told The Information. If this capacity is not used, Brookfield plans to lease it to third-party cloud operators under a more traditional rental structure.
The move follows the launch of a $20 billion joint venture between Brookfield and the Qatar Investment Authority, which aims to invest in AI infrastructure in Qatar and other international markets.
If Brookfield continues with its plans, the launch of Radiant could put it in direct competition with AWS and Microsoft Azure. The Information says, however, that it could have a distinct advantage over its competitors, due to its multibillion-dollar investments in the global energy sector. It said these assets could allow it to control key parts of the AI value chain in a way that pure-cloud competitors cannot.
With Amazon, Microsoft and others under increasing pressure To make their AI investments profitable, the launch of Radiant could force them to find ways to optimize the energy logistics of their data centers to remain competitive.
Image: SiliciumANGLE/Meta AI
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