BlackRock and IFM Investors Reportedly in Exclusive Talks for $25 Billion Data Center Deal

BlackRock and IFM Investors are in exclusive talks over a data center portfolio valued at $25 billion, according to a Bloomberg TV report cited by Newsquawk and Crypto Briefing. No deal has been signed. Newsquawk's own analysis notes that "exclusive talks" reporting typically means a sale process is in its final stages, and such situations either close near the terms reported or fall apart because a price gap remains.

IFM manages roughly A$230 billion on behalf of pension funds, making it one of the largest institutional infrastructure investors in the world, according to Crypto Briefing. The Melbourne-based firm bought Swiss data center operator Green Group in July 2025 and has been building out its own expertise in the sector.

BlackRock's Buying Spree Keeps Growing

This potential deal would be the latest in a run of enormous transactions by BlackRock's infrastructure arm. In October 2025, Macquarie Asset Management agreed to sell Aligned Data Centers to a consortium that included the AI Infrastructure Partnership, Abu Dhabi-backed MGX, and BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners, according to Data Center Dynamics. That $40 billion transaction, more than double the previous record $16.1 billion AirTrunk deal, was expected to close in the first half of 2026 and covers Aligned's roughly 5 gigawatts of active and planned capacity across the U.S. and Latin America.

Crypto Briefing describes that deal as having closed in July 2026 under BlackRock's control, citing more than 51 campuses and 6.4 gigawatts of capacity plus a $5 billion commitment for future growth. That framing understates that Aligned was bought by a consortium, not BlackRock alone. Microsoft, Nvidia, and Elon Musk's xAI are also members of the AI Infrastructure Partnership that co-invested.

BlackRock has kept moving. Crypto Briefing reports the firm also struck an 80/20 joint venture with Meta for a $14 billion data center in El Paso, Texas, expected to deliver 1 gigawatt of capacity around 2028, plus a roughly $27 billion joint venture with Spain's ACS for broader data center development.

Newsquawk's technical read highlights a key distinction. Buying operating assets with contracted cash flows and existing power capacity is fundamentally different from buying a development pipeline still carrying construction and lease-up risk. Which one this $25 billion deal actually is has not been confirmed.

Bessent Tells AI Companies to Fix Their Messaging

Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in Asheville, North Carolina to call out the AI and data center industry directly. "They have done a horrendous job of explaining themselves to the American people," Bessent said, according to Breitbart News.

Bessent praised AI's potential, pointing to small business growth on Main Street, but said companies need to reset how they talk about the technology so the U.S. reaches what he called the "productivity phase." Notably, he did not invite AI companies or academics to the meeting, instead bringing in industries that use the technology, including John Deere, which discussed reshoring manufacturing to a new North Carolina plant.

Bessent also raised concerns that AI's benefits could concentrate in too few hands, and pushed back on what he called Chinese "agitprop" affecting American sentiment on the technology, while asserting the U.S. has moved from roughly 50 percent of global compute to a projected 80 percent by 2028.

The Concern Worth Taking Seriously

Critics of the AI infrastructure boom, including some finance analysts, have raised a fair concern. Much of this spending runs through joint ventures, consortiums, and circular investment structures where the same handful of players—BlackRock, Nvidia, Microsoft, MGX, and various sovereign wealth funds—keep showing up on both sides of the table. That structure makes it genuinely difficult for outside observers to tell how much of the demand behind these mega-deals is organic versus vendor-financed. No regulator has opened an investigation into these arrangements, and no evidence in the available reporting shows wrongdoing. But the opacity itself is a legitimate reason for scrutiny, not proof of a problem.

What happens next is straightforward to track. If the BlackRock-IFM talks produce a signed agreement, expect confirmation of the deal's perimeter, price, and financing structure—the same checkpoints Newsquawk flagged as the natural follow-through on "exclusive talks" reporting. Whether Bessent's call for better industry messaging translates into any policy action or remains a rhetorical nudge from the G20 podium is an open question the Treasury Department has not yet answered.