What does it have to do with data centers?

A data center is essentially a warehouse full of powerful computers, cooling systems, and high-speed network connections. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google rent space inside them to run the cloud services and AI models that billions of people use every day. Without these buildings, there is no AI, no streaming, no cloud storage.

Stack Infrastructure owns a portfolio of these facilities across Asia Pacific. Stack operates facilities across major markets including Tokyo, Osaka, Sydney, and Melbourne. Those cities are where demand for AI computing is growing fastest, which is exactly why a portfolio of buildings there commands a price between $20 billion and $25 billion.

Why BlackRock and IFM want them

Global investors have been pouring money into Asia's booming data center sector, driven by rising demand for cloud computing, AI, and digital services. For BlackRock, the vehicle doing the buying is AIP, the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership, which it created specifically for this purpose. AIP launched with plans to initially invest more than $30 billion in AI-related infrastructure, including data centers and energy facilities. Nvidia, xAI, Microsoft, and investment firm MGX are also investors in the partnership.

For IFM Investors, the Australian pension-fund manager, data centers fit neatly alongside the roads, airports, and pipelines it already owns. They are long-life assets with steady, contracted income, which is exactly what pension funds need to pay retirees decades from now.

Who is selling

The bidders aim to reach an agreement with Stack's owner, Blue Owl Capital, which initially sought an asset valuation exceeding $30 billion. The gap between what Blue Owl wanted and what the consortium is prepared to pay is part of why talks could still stretch out or fall apart entirely.

The deeper point is this: data centers used to be back-office infrastructure that nobody outside the industry thought much about. AI changed that. The moment large language models and cloud AI became something every business wanted to use, the buildings that run them became some of the most contested real estate on earth.