The institutionalization of AI compute has officially arrived. Mega-funds are no longer just backing software startups; they are actively building vertically integrated “AI factories.”
Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) has established a $1.3 billion valuation for its newly formed AI infrastructure company, Radiant, following a strategic merger with London-based cloud computing firm Ori Industries.
💰 THE DEAL & THE VEHICLE:
- The Merger: All existing investors in Ori Industries (which was backed by Saudi Aramco’s venture arm) have rolled their stakes into the combined entity, augmented by fresh capital from Brookfield.
- The Leadership: Ori founder Mahdi Yahya will step in as President of Radiant, alongside Brookfield’s Vishal Padiyar as Executive Chair.
- The Mega-Fund: Radiant represents the first major compute deployment from Brookfield’s dedicated AI Infrastructure Fund, which is seeking $10 billion in initial commitments and aiming to scale up to a staggering $100 billion investment pipeline.
⚙️ THE “UTILITY” BUSINESS MODEL: Brookfield is structuring this play to avoid rapid technological obsolescence risk. They are treating AI compute like a traditional infrastructure asset (similar to toll roads or pipelines).
- The Offering: Radiant provides on-demand, sovereign AI compute capacity to governments and massive enterprises under strict, long-term leasing contracts.
- The Ecosystem: The infrastructure is built on Nvidia’s reference designs (Nvidia is also a strategic fund backer), while simultaneously leveraging a massive $5 billion allocation for Bloom Energy to deploy behind-the-meter power solutions. It is a fully vertically integrated play: powered land + proprietary software + sovereign compute.
💡 ANALYST TAKEAWAY: The AI bottleneck is no longer just about designing better large language models; it is about securing the raw capital and the physical electricity required to run them. By merging Ori’s established distributed AI cloud platform with Brookfield’s massive balance sheet and energy generation portfolio, Radiant is perfectly positioned to capitalize on the global compute deficit. If you want to understand where Private Equity is heading in 2026, look at Radiant: structuring 5-year GPU leasing contracts with investment-grade clients to guarantee utility-like returns on next-generation hardware.+2
👇 Infrastructure & PE Investors: Do you agree that “Compute-as-a-Service” can be underwritten as a traditional, low-risk infrastructure asset, or does the rapid advancement of AI hardware make this a highly risky leasing model?