Blackstone Inc. portfolio company Lancium, an energy technology and infrastructure firm backed by funds managed by Blackstone Energy Transition Partners and Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, has announced a strategic collaboration with NVIDIA to deploy the chipmaker’s technology across Lancium’s growing infrastructure portfolio.
Lancium will leverage its AI factory campuses, which total 4 GW of leased capacity and a further 15 GW in the development pipeline, to deploy NVIDIA’s full-stack AI factory platform, which includes accelerated computing, networking, and software. This will, according to a press release, provide NVIDIA customers and partners with access to large-scale, power-ready capacity for AI workloads.
“Partnering with NVIDIA — the definitive technology platform for AI computing — ensures that every campus in our portfolio will be deployed with the industry’s most advanced technology and that NVIDIA’s customers will have access to the capacity they need to compete and lead in the AI era,” said Michael McNamara, Lancium Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder.
“AI factories are the essential infrastructure of this new industrial era,” said Nico Caprez, NVIDIA Vice President of Global AI Infrastructure Growth. “Together with Lancium, we’re enabling a new generation of gigawatt-scale, power-ready AI factories – enabling cloud partners, AI natives and AI infrastructure developers deploy the full NVIDIA computing stack faster, operate more efficiently and turn energy into intelligence at unprecedented scale.”
“This partnership with NVIDIA is a strong testament to Lancium’s position at the epicenter of energy and AI infrastructure – two of Blackstone’s highest conviction investment themes. We look forward to continuing to partner with these leading companies to help power the next generation of AI innovation,” added Bilal Khan, Blackstone Senior Managing Director.
Lancium will make use of NVIDIA’s DSX MaxLPS design and operating framework at its AI factories. This approach allows for up to 40 percent more GPUs at a site within the same power envelope. The firm will also employ DSX Flex to adjust AI factory power consumption, supporting grid-responsive campuses.
Lancium is planning to develop a 1 GW AI data center campus in Childress, Texas with Crusoe, an AI factory company. The data center is being built to support the AI computing requirements of an unnamed hyperscaler.
Earlier this month, w.media reported that NVIDIA had partnered with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to mobilize over US$ 500 billion for the buildout of AI infrastructure. NVIDIA has called it the beginning of an open capital market for AI infrastructure.