Australia's Macquarie on Tuesday agreed to take a 15% stake in Applied Digital's high-performance computing business and invest up to $5 billion in the company's artificial intelligence data centers amid booming AI demand.

Investment firm Macquarie is to invest billions of dollars into data center firm Applied Digital. First reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by the company, Macquarie Asset Management (MAM) is set to invest $5 billion into Applied, a cryptomining firm pivoting to AI and HPC data centers.

Macquarie’s funds will help Applied Digital complete construction of an AI data centre in North Dakota, and potentially finance additional ones.