Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and a US energy investment firm are partnering for a $25 billion investment into energy infrastructure for data centers.
ADQ and Energy Capital Partners this week announced an agreement to establish a 50:50 partnership in new build power generation and energy infrastructure. The partnership aims to service the growing power needs of data centers, hyperscale cloud companies, and other energy-intensive industries.
The companies plan to make total capital investments of more than $25 billion across 25GW worth of projects – with an initial $5 billion contribution from the two firms. The investments will be primarily focused in the US – with a portion allocated to other international markets.
The investments will be focused on greenfield development, new build, and expansion opportunity projects. The companies said the partnership is “primed” to begin pursuing opportunities immediately.
Few details were provided, but investments will reportedly primarily be on new-build natural gas-fired power generation assets.
Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi, managing director and group CEO of ADQ, said: “The acceleration of AI and its societal adoption presents attractive opportunities to serve the power and infrastructure needs of data centers and hyperscalers. Our partnership with ECP allows us to invest meaningfully in generation and related infrastructure assets that support accelerating demand for power, promoting the progress of these industries and helping to future-proof economies.”
Doug Kimmelman, Energy Capital's founder and executive chairman, added: “AI will be a major driver of US economic and job growth over the coming decade, but not unless ample new electricity supplies are developed. We are honored to build an investing partnership with ADQ to provide the electricity resources demanded by the rapidly growing AI data center sector where the build-out of new power generation resources or ‘additionality’ in the US will require significant, patient capital with a long-term horizon.”
Since its founding in 2005, ECP has owned, controlled, and operated more than 83GW of power generation across the US, spanning natural gas, geothermal, hydro, solar, wind, battery storage, and waste-to-energy. It has $73 billion of assets under management across private equity, credit, and infrastructure.
Energy Capital has previously signed a $50 billion partnership with KKR for data center and power development focused on accelerating data center, power generation, and transmission infrastructure development to support the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing worldwide.
Established in 2018, ADQ is a sovereign investor for the government of Abu Dhabi, with investments across energy and utilities, transport and logistics, food and agriculture, and healthcare and life sciences. It has some $225 billion in assets.
