📶 $30 billion data center investment

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Good morning 👋

BlackRock and Microsoft are teaming up and seeking a $30 billion (!) fund to invest in data infrastructure.

More AI adoption = more computing power needed = larger data infrastructure required. This is the simplified picks-and-shovels thesis of the fund.

Apparently, the UAE and other government entities are joining in as well.

We’re waiting on more details, but one thing is clear: AI isn’t going anywhere, and the capital required to support global adoption will have to come from a global collection of capital partners.

Let’s get into the rest of the headlines from yesterday.

TL;DR:

• 📰 News

• 🔗 Links

• 🐥 Tweet

• 💰 Funds

• ™️ Startups

• 📶 Recs

• 🗳 Poll

HEADLINES
BlackRock + Microsoft seek $30b for data infra 💰

• Global Infrastructure Partners, BlackRock, Microsoft, and MGX Launch New AI Partnership to Invest in Data Centers and Supporting Power Infrastructure (Other)

• One of the largest blockchain fund of funds has raised over $135 million across two new vehicles (Yahoo Finance)

• Marc Andreessen, Garry Tan back emerging VC’s $100M gaming fund (Pitchbook)

• Secondary Financings Offer Lifeline In A Slow Exit Market (Crunchbase)

• Enter The AI-Native Founder (Crunchbase)

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LINKS

😳 Surprising Lessons from 20,000 Experiments: Growth Unhinged reveals what growth experiments you shouldn’t add to your website

🇺🇸 Moving to the U.S.A. Boosts Unicorn Potential for Startups: New research by Ilya Strebulaev shows international startups relocating to the US significantly improve their chances of becoming unicorns

🇮🇳 The Definitive Market Guide to Indian-Origin Tech Companies: Akashi Gupta lists the top Indian tech companies

🔎 Next Play Opportunities: Ben at Next Play lists opportunities in engineering roles, co-founder searches, early teams, and investing

📱 Startup Growth Calculator: This tool calculates whether, on its current trajectory, your startup lives or dies

TWEET

FUNDS

P.S. 👉 If you’re looking to get a new VC job … 

We’ve found the best way to do that is to find the jobs before they become available. In our opinion, the best way to do that is to a) find who is raising funds and b) find who is the right person to contact at each of those funds.

Lucky for you, we’ve already collected all of that information for you.

Here’s how to see all the information we have on funds (plus contact info)

STARTUPS (Together with Harmonic)
Pre-seed Bessemer portfolio companies that have raised in the past 4-12 months 🔎

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RECS

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• SCALE Newsletter: Weekly insights directly from the world's best growth-stage founders and investors

• Big Desk Energy: Startup insights, stories, and vibes sent to your inbox every Tuesday

POLL

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- Clay

RESULTS

Here are the results from our poll question in yesterday’s piece:

Is remote work dead?

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes - being "remote-first" is an anomaly (9)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Yes - but only for corporate roles (13)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No - plenty of startups will still opt for a distributed workforce (15)

37 Votes