U.S. private equity groups have invested billions of dollars to provide Tiktok owner bytedance with billions of dollars in data centers, a craziest craze now threatened by U.S. attacks on Chinese companies getting the best chips.
Blackstone, Bain Capital, Warburg Pincus and General Atlantic support companies operating Malaysian data centers, which are part of the company, according to four people familiar with the matter. Consider the savages based on Beijing as tenants.
Some people do this without knowing whether the savages have been using or intending to use these sites to exploit legal vulnerabilities to access high-end NVIDIA chips, as it will develop its AI potential.
Since 2023, Chinese companies have been banned from buying NVIDIA’s highest-performing chips outside the United States. However, they are able to rent space in Malaysia by renting data centers overseas (usually in Malaysia), which usually contain chips owned by third-party companies.
The vulnerability will be closed in May by banning Chinese groups from not only having such American technology, but also having no access to it to help build large language models transferred back to China.
The rule was released by the Joe Biden administration before leaving the office.
“If you want to build a data center in Malaysia, NVIDIA[chips]. . . You will have to meet these safety requirements, including not allowed [China] Training large language models on these datasets.
The types of chips used in data centers are not clear, and private equity groups don’t always know, in part because data center companies don’t own chips or rent them to customers.
However, multiple people who know about the matter told the UK bank that the dispatch plans to use Malaysia’s data centers to access high-end Nvidia chips.
The buyout group tends to look at “You are providing power and cooling systems for buildings; a private equity director says the content in the server and the server is not your business.”
In recent years, Bytedance has increasingly used data centers outside China, especially in Malaysia, as it has become a key figure in the AI competition in China. FT reported last month that it is planning a large number of orders to build overseas AI capacity this year, including through such rental agreements. Also, the Atlantic General has invested in the beast itself.
“There is this game of cat and mouse [US] The Ministry of Commerce has modified the parameters for capturing chips. ” said Matt Rabinowitz, a partner at Pillsbury Law Firm.
Under the new rules, both the owner and operator of the chip used in the data center must go through an audit process to ensure compliance.
It is unclear whether US President Donald Trump will propose measures against China in his first term, and he will further change regulations on chip exports and their use.
A job consultant said about the industry.
However, they added that global demand for data centers could fill the gap.
In recent years, global private equity groups have competed to invest in data centers, although other transaction activity has also slowed down, attracting exposure to growing internet usage and the prospect of an AI boom.
They are trying to distance themselves from the complex and politically full of chip supply business by supporting companies that support physical buildings that operate data centers but do not own internal chips.
“We have no visibility or impact on the servers and devices installed by our customers,” said Princeton Digital Group, a data center operator supported by Warburg Pincus.
Bain said its portfolio companies do not have access to servers inside the data centers they operate, adding that they “comply with relevant laws and regulations in all jurisdictions in which we operate.” Blackstone and Atlantic General declined to comment.
Bytedance is an anchor tenant for a data center located in the southern Malaysian state of Johor, owned by Bain Capital Portfolio Company Wintrix. It is also a tenant for several other Johor facilities, including tenants operated by Blackstone-owned Airtrunk, PDG and Epoch Digital, and operated by Atlantic-owned infrastructure manager Actis.
Bytedance plans to spend more than $12 billion on AI infrastructure this year, with $6.8 billion of that going to be spent outside China. But U.S. rules could complicate this investment.
The company told the UK Bank: “Byedance complies with all applicable laws and regulations.”
Warburg Pincus agreed to invest up to $300 million in PDG in 2017, and has since injected further funds. Blackstone completed a $24 billion ($15 billion) acquisition in Sydney’s Airtrunk in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and Japan in December.
Bain bought China’s Chindata in 2019, merged it with Bridge Data Centers, and listed Nasdaq’s merged company in 2020. It is valued at a combined company (now known as Wintrix, private) at a $3 billion valuation in 2023.
The Atlantic General completed his purchase of ACTI last year.
