The Chinese AI Start-Up Deepseek has increased the prevailing view that artificial intelligence systems require enormous amounts of power and investments. But Blackstone, the private equity colos and an important global investor in data centers that perform AI systems, remains optimistic.
“We still think there is an essential need for physical infrastructure, data centers and power,” said Jonathan Gray, president of Blackstone, during a profit of the fourth quarter with investors on Thursday. “The shape of that use can change.”
Mr. Gray said that, like many of the investing and business world, managers in Blackstone have spent a lot of time in the past week weighing the impact of Deepseek.
In recent years, Blackstone has made an aggressive push of buying and building data centers, the physical infrastructure used by technology companies to run AI systems. In 2021 it bought the American data center company QTS for $ 10 billion, and last year it led a $ 24 billion deal to buy Airtrunk, which operates data centers in Asia.
Mr. Gray's comments repeated the relatively optimistic views of some technological managers in recent days, including those of Microsoft's Chief Executive, Satya Nadella. Mr. Gray said that he expected that as the costs of computing power for AI decreased drastically, AI would be taken over more broadly. In other words, he said, although the amount of power needed for an AI model to answer a specific question can decrease, people will ask more questions.
Mr. Gray said that Blackstone is only building data centers for technology companies that sign long -term rental contracts. “We don't build them speculatively.” The way customers use these data centers, he noticed, could change very well.
The stock of Blackstone has been on a run lately. It has been traded around 40 percent in the past year and has surpassed large stock indexes. It fell around 3 percent in the afternoon trade.
Thursday's call on Thursday was a shift from the previous one. In recent calls, the senior executives of the company had taken a few minutes from the outset to discuss the importance of AI for the world and the investments of Blackstone around the technology.
In July, for example, the Chief Executive of Blackstone, Stephen A. Schwarzman, mentioned the consequences of AI “as deeply as what happened in 1880, when Thomas Edison patented the electric light bulb.” He mentioned expectations that the United States will need around $ 1 trillion in capital expenditures for new data centers and another $ 1 trillion outside the United States in the coming five years.
“Blackstone positions itself as the largest financial investor in AI infrastructure in the world as a result of our platform, capital and expertise,” said Mr. Schwartzman at the time.
On Thursday morning's call, Blackstone managers did not speak to AI until they were asked about it.
