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By Arsheeya Bajwa and Aditya Soni (Reuters) -An investor group including BlackRock, Microsoft and Nvidia is buying one of the world's biggest data center operators with nearly 80 sites in a deal worth $40 billion to secure coveted computing capacity for artificial intelligence. The purchase of U.S.-based Aligned Data Centers from Australian Macquarie Asset Management on Wednesday is the first deal for the AI Infrastructure Partnership formed last year which also includes Abu Dhabi-based fund MGX and Elon Musk's startup xAI among its backers. "With this investment in Aligned Data Centers, we further our goal of delivering the infrastructure necessary to power the future of AI," said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who also serves as the chairman of the AI Infrastructure Partnership. DEALS TO SNAP UP CHIPS AND INFRASTRUCTURE The acquisition is the latest in a series of big-ticket deals from Big Tech and Silicon Valley startups that has been fueled by the boom in AI.  Major tech companies including Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta, Microsoft and CoreWeave, are on track to spend $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year, Morgan Stanley estimates. OpenAI, the startup at the heart of the AI boom, struck deals in recent weeks with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom that may cost over $1 trillion to secure about 26 gigawatts of computing capacity, enough to power roughly 20 million U.S. homes. Meta Platforms is building several multi-gigawatt AI data centers, including one called Prometheus due to come online in 2026 and another, Hyperion, that can scale up to 5 gigawatts. Privately-held Aligned Data Centers currently has over 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity located across 50 campuses in the U.S. and Latin America. Joe Tigay, portfolio manager at Nvidia shareholder Equity Armor Investments, said the acquisition highlights the growing value of data center assets for investors. "They’re looking at rapid expansion to meet AI demand and optimize for it." SPENDING SURGE AS INTEREST BOOMS Aligned has been a big winner of the AI infrastructure spending boom, raising $12 billion in equity and debt earlier this year in one of the largest private capital injections into a data center company. Shares of its publicly listed rivals, such as Applied Digital, have soared more than four-fold this year. Applied Digital shares jumped 5% on Wednesday. The investment group buying Aligned also includes Kuwait Investment Authority and Singapore state-owned investor Temasek as anchor investors. It has an initial target of deploying $30 billion of equity capital, with the potential of reaching $100 billion including debt. It has not disclosed how much each partner has contributed to the tie-up or the equity value of Wednesday's deal. Nvidia and Aligned declined to comment, while the investors did not immediately respond to requests seeking more details on the deal. Aligned will remain headquartered in Dallas, Texas, under CEO Andrew Schaap when the deal closes in the first half of 2026, the investor group said in its statement. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Elaine Hardcastle)

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(Corrects spelling of Matt Hershenson's name in paragraph 4) By Stephen Nellis SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Vertical Semiconductor, a startup spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on Wednesday said it raised $11 million in funding to commercialize chip technology that can deliver electricity to artificial intelligence servers more efficiently. Vertical makes chips out of a material called gallium nitride, an alternative to silicon which is becoming central to an effort led by chip designer Nvidia to rework auxiliary chips inside AI data centers to direct electricity and convert it into the form needed by Nvidia's chips. Those data centers currently consume as much power as some cities. However, when converting huge voltages from power stations to the tiny voltages needed by microchips, much of that electricity simply generates heat. That has spurred a frenzy of investment and interest in reducing that loss. "That is power you are not delivering to (computing tasks) – it straight turns into heat," Matt Hershenson, a partner with Playground Global, the venture capital firm that led the funding round, said in an interview. Established chipmakers such as Renesas, Infineon and Power Integrations are all working with Nvidia to develop power chips made of gallium nitride, known as "GaN" in the chip industry, for AI data centers. But Vertical, which plans to deliver prototypes this year and to deliver chips next year, has a different approach that it hopes will make its chips smaller and cooler. On most existing GaN chips, the transistors – the fundamental building blocks of chips – are laid out horizontally. Vertical, as its name suggests, stacks the parts of the transistor on top of one another, leading to more compact chips. The approach came out of work at MIT led by Tomas Palacios, a professor at the school who co-founded the firm, and developed by Joshua Perozek, whose doctoral research focused on the technology. Cynthia Liao, who joined as CEO from MIT's Sloan School of Management, said the startup hopes to compete against established players by offering better cost savings to data center owners over time than more established technologies. "We do believe we offer a compelling next-generation solution that is not just a couple of percentage points here and there, but actually a step-wise transformation," Liao said in an interview. (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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By Gianluca Lo Nostro and Mathieu Rosemain (Reuters) -Altice France, the owner telecoms firm SFR, has rejected a bid from three French rivals to buy the operator, Altice CEO Arthur Dreyfuss told staff in a memo on Wednesday, setting back a potential deal that could spur more consolidation in the European telecoms market. Bouygues Telecom, Iliad's Free and Orange said late on Tuesday they had submitted a 17-billion-euro ($19.8 billion) non-binding offer to buy most of Altice France's assets, valuing the company at 21 billion euros. The joint bid spurred hopes for more sector consolidation in Europe on Wednesday, with stocks rising in Paris despite the French government saying it would be vigilant about the deal. "We confirm that we received an indicative offer last night for part of Altice France's assets. This offer has been immediately rejected," said Dreyfuss in a memo to employees seen by Reuters. Bouygues and Orange said they had taken note of Altice's decision to reject the offer. Iliad did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment. J.P. Morgan analysts said in a research note that the 17-billion-euro offer was better than expected, as they had previously estimated a standalone value of 16 billion euros, with synergies underpinning a price tag above 20 billion euros. A source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters in September that anything below that range would be unacceptable for SFR. Earlier on Wednesday, French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said he was going to be "extremely vigilant" about the deal. "I'm going to be vigilant about two things: the impact on consumer prices and the impact on the quality of service," Lescure said in an interview on French radio RTL. "There's a competition authority; it's independent. It's there to protect consumers, and it will do so," he said. The French government is the largest investor in Orange. BID SPURS EUROPEAN CONSOLIDATION HOPES Shares of Bouygues, which had touched their highest price in more than seven years earlier in the session, slightly pared gains after Altice's rejection to trade 8% higher by 0925 GMT. Orange's shares were up 3%. Other French stocks were also up, with the country's benchmark CAC 40 index gaining over 2%. Italian peer Telecom Italia's shares meanwhile rose 2.4%. SFR is France's second-largest telecoms provider with more than 19 million mobile subscribers and 6.1 million fibre customers as of June. France has had four mobile network operators since 2012: Orange, Bouygues, Iliad’s Free, and SFR. Any deal to reduce the number of carriers to three would have to get approval from European or French regulators. GETTING REGULATORS ON BOARD The European Commission approved a 4-to-3 merger in Spain last year, but requested from MasMovil and Orange a package of remedies to create the 18-billion-euro MasOrange operator. French antitrust agency chief Benoit Coeure said in an interview with daily Les Echos in July that if a deal involving SFR was presented to the regulator, it would examine it without prejudice, but without ignoring difficulties either. A deal might also trigger consolidation in other markets, with Iliad deciding for a sale of its operations in Italy, said analyst Giorgio Tavolini from Italian brokerage firm Intermonte. "It would make sense for the group to leave Italy – where it does not generate cash, once spectrum costs are considered, to focus its resources on the French market," he said in a daily report. ($1 = 0.8593 euros) (Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro in Gdansk, Elvira Pollina in Milan, Mathieu Rosemain in Paris, additional reporting by Alessandro Parodi in Paris; Editing by Dominique Patton and Milla Nissi-Prussak)

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(Reuters) -Apple unveiled a series of product updates on Wednesday, including a refreshed MacBook Pro, an iPad Pro and a second generation of the Vision Pro headset, as it embeds its latest M5 chip across devices aimed at creative professionals. The introduction of M5-powered devices positions Apple to counter performance gains from rivals using Qualcomm and Intel's latest AI-oriented chips. The move builds on Apple's strategy of debuting its most advanced chip in the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro devices ahead of others. The new 14-inch MacBook Pro, featuring the M5 processor, is a step up from the M4 series of chips introduced last year. The new, faster chip can power advanced AI-based applications. Prices for the latest devices, however, remain unchanged from the prior versions with the M4 chip. The MacBook Pro starts at $1,599 for the 14-inch variant. The iPad Pro starts at $999, while the second-generation Vision Pro starts at $3,499. The M5 chip, fabricated using an advanced 3-nanometer process, is expected to improve performance and energy efficiency across devices. The MacBook Pro with the latest chip can run large language models on the device, the company said. Apple's Vision Pro headset, launched in 2023, was due for an update after having received a lukewarm response. The Vision Pro, introduced as the company's first major new product in nearly a decade, has received positive reviews for its display quality but remains a niche device with limited adoption. Sales of the iPad were expected to grow about 6% in fiscal year ended September 2025, after a three-year slump, thanks to a smaller and more affordable version of the device and a recovery in demand for electronics globally. Mac sales were expected to grow again this year, helped by a smaller and cheaper Mac Mini device with the M4 processor that appealed to budget-conscious consumers. (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

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(Reuters) -Nscale will deploy around 200,000 Nvidia AI chips under an expanded agreement with Microsoft across its data centers in Europe and the U.S., the British artificial intelligence group said on Wednesday. The Nvidia-backed company did not disclose the financial terms, but the Financial Times reported it could generate up to $14 billion in revenue for the startup, based on a comparable contract. The agreement will be executed in collaboration with Dell Technologies. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Nscale also said its joint venture with Norway's Aker will supply Microsoft with around 52,000 Nvidia GPUs from its hyperscale AI campus in Narvik, Norway. AI-related infrastructure spending is expected to surpass $2.8 trillion through 2029, according to a Citigroup estimate, as the so-called hyperscalers including Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet make multi-billion-dollar investments to ease capacity constraints.  Nscale will begin supplying Nvidia graphics processing units to Microsoft via its data centers in Texas and Portugal starting next year, it said on Wednesday. The company also plans to expand its Texas operations over the coming years. The company in September raised $1.1 billion from investors, including Aker and Finland's Nokia, to help accelerate its data center buildout. (Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Deborah Sophia; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair and Sriraj Kalluvila)

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(Reuters) -Nscale will deploy around 200,000 Nvidia AI chips under an expanded agreement with Microsoft across its data centers in Europe and the U.S., the British artificial intelligence group said on Wednesday. The Nvidia-backed company did not disclose the financial terms, but the Financial Times reported it could generate up to $14 billion in revenue for the startup, based on a comparable contract. The agreement will be executed in collaboration with Dell Technologies. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Nscale also said its joint venture with Norway's Aker will supply Microsoft with around 52,000 Nvidia GPUs from its hyperscale AI campus in Narvik, Norway. AI-related infrastructure spending is expected to surpass $2.8 trillion through 2029, according to a Citigroup estimate, as the so-called hyperscalers including Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet make multi-billion-dollar investments to ease capacity constraints.  Nscale will begin supplying Nvidia graphics processing units to Microsoft via its data centers in Texas and Portugal starting next year, it said on Wednesday. The company also plans to expand its Texas operations over the coming years. The company in September raised $1.1 billion from investors, including Aker and Finland's Nokia, to help accelerate its data center buildout. (Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Deborah Sophia; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair and Sriraj Kalluvila)

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(Reuters) -A consortium that includes BlackRock, Nvidia, xAI and Microsoft will acquire Aligned Data Centers from private infrastructure funds managed by Macquarie Asset Management and co‑investors in a deal worth $40 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026, the companies said on Wednesday. Here is a list of multi-billion dollar AI, cloud and chip deals signed recently: BROADCOM AND OPENAI OpenAI has partnered with Broadcom to produce its first in-house artificial intelligence processors, the latest tie-up for the world's most valuable startup for computing power amid surging demand for its services. AMD AND OPENAI AMD agreed to supply artificial intelligence chips to OpenAI in a multi-year deal that would also give the ChatGPT creator the option to buy up to roughly 10% of the chipmaker. NVIDIA AND OPENAI Nvidia is set to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply it with data center chips, in a deal giving the chipmaker a financial stake in OpenAI. OpenAI is already an important customer for Nvidia. META AND COREWEAVE CoreWeave has signed a $14 billion agreement with Meta to supply computing power to the Facebook parent. NVIDIA AND INTEL Nvidia will invest $5 billion in Intel, giving it roughly 4% of the company after new shares are issued. ORACLE AND META Oracle is in talks with Meta for a multi-year cloud computing deal worth about $20 billion, underscoring the social media giant's drive to secure faster access to computing power. ORACLE AND OPENAI Oracle is reported to have signed one of the biggest cloud deals ever with OpenAI, under which the ChatGPT maker is expected to buy $300 billion in computing power from the company for about five years. COREWEAVE AND NVIDIA CoreWeave signed a $6.3 billion initial order with backer Nvidia, a deal that guarantees that the AI chipmaker will purchase any cloud capacity not sold to customers. NEBIUS GROUP AND MICROSOFT Nebius Group will provide Microsoft with GPU infrastructure capacity in a deal worth $17.4 billion over a five-year term. META AND GOOGLE Google struck a six-year cloud computing deal with Meta Platforms worth more than $10 billion, Reuters had reported in August. INTEL AND SOFTBANK GROUP Intel is getting a $2 billion capital injection from SoftBank Group, making the Japanese tech investor one of the top-10 shareholders of the troubled U.S. chipmaker. TESLA AND SAMSUNG Tesla signed a $16.5 billion deal to source chips from Samsung Electronics, with the EV maker's CEO Elon Musk saying that the South Korean tech giant's new chip factory in Texas would make Tesla's next-generation AI6 chip. META AND SCALE AI Meta took a 49% stake for about $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought in its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to play a prominent role in the tech giant's artificial intelligence strategy. GOOGLE AND WINDSURF Google hired several key staff members from AI code generation startup Windsurf and will pay $2.4 billion in license fees as part of the deal to use some of Windsurf's technology under non-exclusive terms. COREWEAVE AND OPENAI CoreWeave signed a five-year contract worth $11.9 billion with OpenAI in March, before the Nvidia-backed startup's IPO. STARGATE DATACENTER PROJECT Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle to build data centers. The project was announced in January by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that the companies would invest up to $500 billion to fund infrastructure for artificial intelligence. AMAZON AND ANTHROPIC Amazon.com pumped $4 billion into OpenAI competitor Anthropic, doubling its investment in the firm known for its GenAI chatbot Claude. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City, Deborah Sophia, Arnav Mishra and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Maju Samuel and Sahal Muhammed)

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(Reuters) -An investor group, including BlackRock and Nvidia, will buy Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie Asset Management in a deal worth $40 billion, the companies said on Wednesday, as AI infrastructure expansion powers on. The deal underscores an intensifying race to expand the costly, supply-constrained infrastructure required to develop artificial intelligence technology, as companies rush to build sophisticated AI models. The acquisition follows a slew of mega-deals focused on securing coveted compute capacity. ChatGPT creator OpenAI has in recent weeks unveiled agreements totaling about 26 gigawatts of computing capacity, enough to power roughly 20 million U.S. homes. The investment consortium, dubbed the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), has an initial target of deploying $30 billion of equity capital, with the potential of reaching $100 billion, including debt. This is AIP's first investment, and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026. "With this investment in Aligned Data Centers, we further our goal of delivering the infrastructure necessary to power the future of AI," said Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and chairman of AIP. AIP also includes xAI and Microsoft, along with the Kuwait Investment Authority and Singapore's state-owned investor Temasek as anchor investors Aligned designs, builds and operates data centers for hyperscalers, neoclouds and enterprises. Its portfolio includes 50 campuses and more than 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity, including assets under development, located across the U.S. and Latin America. Aligned will remain headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and will be led by CEO Andrew Schaap. HEFTY INVESTMENTS Aligned's $12 billion fundraising earlier this year was one of the largest private capital injections into a data center company. But the scale of financing required to keep pace with demand is only growing. The capital-intensive undertaking of expanding AI infrastructure has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in investment from big tech companies, startups, private equity and infrastructure funds. OpenAI last week unveiled a 6-gigawatt AI chip supply deal with AMD that includes an option to buy a stake in the chipmaker, days after disclosing that Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in the startup and provide it with data center systems with at least 10 gigawatts of capacity. Morgan Stanley estimates big cloud companies, including Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta, Microsoft and Coreweave, are on track to spend $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year. Despite investor concerns about returns from these hefty investments, Big Tech has pledged to spend more on boosting data center capacity. Also, a recent spike in interconnected investments in the AI industry has raised questions over the circularity of the market. Nvidia, one of the key investors in recent AI deals, is also one of the biggest suppliers to the market, dominating the graphics processor industry. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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(Reuters) -An investor group, including BlackRock and Nvidia, will buy Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie Asset Management in a deal worth $40 billion, the companies said on Wednesday, as AI infrastructure expansion powers on. The deal underscores an intensifying race to expand the costly, supply-constrained infrastructure required to develop artificial intelligence technology, as companies rush to build sophisticated AI models. The acquisition follows a slew of mega-deals focused on securing coveted compute capacity. ChatGPT creator OpenAI has in recent weeks unveiled agreements totaling about 26 gigawatts of computing capacity, enough to power roughly 20 million U.S. homes. The investment consortium, dubbed the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), has an initial target of deploying $30 billion of equity capital, with the potential of reaching $100 billion, including debt. This is AIP's first investment, and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026. "With this investment in Aligned Data Centers, we further our goal of delivering the infrastructure necessary to power the future of AI," said Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and chairman of AIP. AIP also includes xAI and Microsoft, along with the Kuwait Investment Authority and Singapore's state-owned investor Temasek as anchor investors Aligned designs, builds and operates data centers for hyperscalers, neoclouds and enterprises. Its portfolio includes 50 campuses and more than 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity, including assets under development, located across the U.S. and Latin America. Aligned will remain headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and will be led by CEO Andrew Schaap. HEFTY INVESTMENTS Aligned's $12 billion fundraising earlier this year was one of the largest private capital injections into a data center company. But the scale of financing required to keep pace with demand is only growing. The capital-intensive undertaking of expanding AI infrastructure has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in investment from big tech companies, startups, private equity and infrastructure funds. OpenAI last week unveiled a 6-gigawatt AI chip supply deal with AMD that includes an option to buy a stake in the chipmaker, days after disclosing that Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in the startup and provide it with data center systems with at least 10 gigawatts of capacity. Morgan Stanley estimates big cloud companies, including Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta, Microsoft and Coreweave, are on track to spend $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year. Despite investor concerns about returns from these hefty investments, Big Tech has pledged to spend more on boosting data center capacity. Also, a recent spike in interconnected investments in the AI industry has raised questions over the circularity of the market. Nvidia, one of the key investors in recent AI deals, is also one of the biggest suppliers to the market, dominating the graphics processor industry. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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(Reuters) -S&P Global has agreed to buy private markets data provider With Intelligence, the company said on Wednesday, as it looks to expand its products for the fast-growing segment of financial services. Private markets are seeing increased investor interest as years of higher interest rates and muted exits have pressured private valuations at a time when industry executives are concerned about asset price bubbles in public markets. Insights into pricing and comparables for private assets have become valuable because of the historical opacity around such investments. The trend has drawn BlackRock, with the world's largest asset manager spending $12.5 billion to buy Global Infrastructure Partners last year. It also spent $3.5 billion for private markets data provider Preqin in February and $12 billion for private credit firm HPS Investment Partners in July. Private markets also received a boost from U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order in August, aiming to ease access to nontraditional assets like private equity and private credit in 401(k) plans. Founded in 1998, With provides data and analytics for alternative and private markets to around 3,000 customers globally. It is expected to generate around $130 million in revenue in 2025, with annual contract value growth expected in the high teens. The deal is set to close in 2025, or early 2026, and is expected to be add to the company's adjusted profit per share in 2027, S&P Global said. Citi advised S&P Global, while Centerview Partners was the financial advisor for With. (Reporting by Ateev Bhandari in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

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