An Australian asset manager is partnering with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund to pay for the construction of Anthropic-anchored data centers in the United States.

Macquarie Asset Management, GIC and Anthropic reached a deal to create Theseus Infrastructure, a new platform that will build, operate and lease data center infrastructure, primarily in the U.S. 

Funds managed by Macquarie and GIC will be used to provide capital for construction of purpose-built projects for Anthropic, the creator of artificial intelligence model Claude. Anthropic will cover the excess electricity costs that any new hyperscaler data centers will cause, in line with a prior pledge, the company said Monday. 

The new joint venture said planned developments would create thousands of construction jobs, but the announcement didn’t include any new project rollouts. 

Computing power and the immense loads of electricity used by AI models have made data center infrastructure a key bottleneck to growth in the sector, if not the only thing holding it back. 

The wave of data centers coming online is also driving up energy costs in some regions. PJM, which operates the country’s largest energy grid, has warned that electric bills could rise by as much as 60% in the next five years. 

PJM also told data center operators in a letter that spikes in power usage could lead to data centers being temporarily shut off from the grid to avoid cutting power to local residents. PJM’s system covers 13 states from Ohio to Virginia and includes Loudoun County, Virginia, an area that was known as Data Center Alley even before AI’s surging popularity. 

Power bills are already rising in some municipalities, adding fuel to what has been a rising tide of discontent and community pushback to data center development.

Anthropic pledged in February to offset increased energy costs from its operations, while its competitors — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI — were pulled into the White House in March to make a similar commitment. 

Anthropic has also held its development plans and build-out commitments more closely than its peers. In November, the San Francisco-based firm said it would spend $50B to develop new infrastructure, starting in Texas and New York, but has otherwise not highlighted specific projects. 

It signed a 240K SF office lease at 500 Howard St. in San Francisco in April after subleasing the space from Slack on a deal that was set to expire in 2028. At the start of the year, the firm also leased all of 300 and 342 Howard St. in a 480K SF deal that was one of the largest in the city in the last five years. 

GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, also announced a $1.6B joint venture in March with Prologis, the globe’s largest industrial landlord, that would target U.S. build-to-suit projects. GIC signed a similar deal with Realty Income in January that had roughly $1.5B in commitments at launch. 

Sydney-based Macquarie Asset Management has a deep balance sheet of data center investments around the world, but it’s also shed some assets in the space. It sold Aligned Data Centers last year to a BlackRock fund and partners in a deal valued at around $40B. TPG is also reportedly in talks to acquire Netrality Data Centers, which is majority-owned by Macquarie, for between $2B and $3B.