NEW YORK — Apollo announced that Apollo-managed funds and affiliates (the “Apollo Funds”) have led a $3.5 billion capital solution for Valor Compute Infrastructure L.P. (“VCI”), a fund managed by Valor Equity Partners (“Valor”), to support its $5.4 billion acquisition and lease of data center compute infrastructure, including NVIDIA GB200 GPUs, to a subsidiary of xAI Corp (“xAI”). The financing uses a triple net lease structure and will support one of the world’s most powerful compute clusters for ongoing model training and development of Grok.
NVIDIA invested in VCI as an anchor Limited Partner alongside many of Valor’s institutional investors. Since inception in 2023, xAI has rapidly established its position as one of the leading companies in artificial intelligence, with Grok 4 demonstrating strong performance across benchmarks.
“This transaction represents a hallmark, downside-protected investment for Apollo in the AI infrastructure space and underscores our role as a leading provider of flexible, asset-based capital for next-generation assets,” said Apollo Partner Christopher Lahoud. “We are supporting the growth of this transformative technology by investing in the critical infrastructure that enables it, alongside highly regarded partners like Valor and NVIDIA, who are driving the next wave of innovation.”
“VCI is an extension of our continued service as a firm to xAI. The fund provides investors with the opportunity to invest in critical artificial intelligence compute infrastructure with quarterly cash distributions and upside through ownership of the compute assets,” said Valor Founder, CEO and CIO Antonio Gracias.
Apollo estimates that global data center infrastructure will require several trillion dollars of investment over the next decade, driven by secular trends associated with the Global Industrial Renaissance and accelerating demand for compute capacity and AI workloads. Since 2022, Apollo-managed funds and affiliates have deployed over $40 billioni into next-generation infrastructure, including compute capacity, digital platforms, and renewable energy.
Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal counsel to the Apollo Funds, Proskauer Rose LLP served as legal counsel to VCI and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP served as legal counsel to xAI.
Tagged with data center, NVIDIA