Key insights
- KKR is launching a new AI data center venture, Helix Digital Infrastructure, with over $10 billion in equity, including strategic partners like Nvidia. Led by former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky, the venture aims to address the energy and infrastructure crunch hindering big tech's AI ambitions. This significant investment in AI infrastructure could signal strong growth prospects for related technology and infrastructure companies, potentially boosting the tech sector.
A group led by investment firm KKR (KKR) is devoting $10 billion into a new AI data center venture, Helix Digital Infrastructure, headed by former Amazon Web Services (AMZN) CEO Adam Selipsky.
Selipsky sits down with Julie Hyman to talk more about this investment into AI infrastructure.
in the latest bid by an alternative asset manager to solve an energy
supply crunch slowing big tech's AI ambitions."
Hey KR and I are co-founding this company. So, it is a startup. We're trying to do something new and different with with with Helix, coordinating all of the infrastructure that has to come together to form the foundation for AI. Uh and yet it's got all of the the backing of uh KKR's infrastructure platform, um and uh all the uh all the resources that are already already there. So, I think it's a pretty powerful combination.
And uh I am trying to hire a a a senior team of of operators to run this as a company. So this is unusual. So you've got Helix trying to pull all the the the the power and the the data centers and the connectivity together and coordinate it, coordinate it in a way that hyperscalers are not used to having. Uh you've got this operated as a company with seasoned senior operators that uh that I'm in the midst of assembling. And then you've got KKR and all the scaled and reliable capital behind it. So you put all that together and we think it's unique and differentiated.
You're building it yourself, contracting with a builder or you owning the the land and then the building itself will be owned by Helix?
So, Helix is launching with over $10 billion of equity invested from KKR itself, uh as well as from the Kuwait Investment Authority, uh Nvidia, which will be a really important cornerstone strategic operational partner and and Vistra as our preferred power partner. So, very powerful, you know, set of relationships. And uh we will we will both build things as well as invest uh potentially purchase platforms ourselves. So, you can expect us to have a robust capability in the data center space and uh uh that company or set of companies that we will end up investing in, uh we would do the data center development, bringing in Vistra and or other power partners as as as needed, um to to supply the power side.
Um, there's a lot of companies that are in different pieces of all of this, right? Um, you know, Blackstone has QTS, there's all the Neo clouds, core weave, etc. Why do we need another one of these?
But if you and I were sitting around in say 1999 talking about the internet saying, well, how could you possibly justify all this build out and all this investment that's happening in the internet? You know, 10 or 15 years later, we would have looked back and laughed and said, wasn't that cute how we thought it was, you know, being overbuilt and it turned out to be dramatically underbuilt. There needed to be way more investment. And I think that what's happening now with AI plus cloud and the general digital buildout is going to be at least that, maybe that on steroids.
And we'll look back and say, wow, I can't believe we were having these overbuilt conversations. But more importantly, uh I I I think a a lot of uh a lot of things are being announced and it's it's just not happening. It's not reliable. It's too hard. Uh the permitting's not there, the financing isn't there. You're seeing Fortune 100 companies having trouble being banked. And and that's that's not something you've seen, you know, often before in history.
And so I think what's unique here and what's different is our pulling together one, being able to coordinate and integrate all of these different pieces, data center, power, connectivity. Two, the fact that this is you know, not only a financial investment. We're we are, you know, running this as a company with folks like me and other seasoned senior, you know, operators. And three, that it does have uh uh the scaled and reliable, you know, capital and uh KKR's backing and the partnerships with Vistra and and Nvidia behind it. So, I think it's a little different than what a lot of other folks are doing.