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Rashid then pitched AI infrastructure to his bosses and forged close ties with Nvidia Corp., an early backer of his fund that’s supplying chips for Brookfield’s GPU-for-rent business. He also helped broker a €20 billion investment to deploy AI infrastructure across France, announcing the deal alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared it a part of the country’s “battle for independence.”
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“It’s been one of the most fun projects, if not the most fun assignment I’ve had over the last 13 years at the firm,” Rashid said at Brookfield’s investor day last year, referring to building the AI fund.
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Rashid’s profile is rising at Brookfield, and he’s viewed as a potential contender to succeed infrastructure CEO Sam Pollock, said people familiar with the matter. Pollock, a 32-year Brookfield veteran and confidant to Flatt, has spearheaded the expansion of the infrastructure business. If Rashid’s AI efforts succeed, it could boost his position in the race to fill that coveted role.
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Along the way, Rashid fends off AI skeptics.
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“Investors, and I guess everyone at Brookfield, is rightly thinking about, is this a bubble?” Rashid said in Brookfield’s event in September. Despite unprecedented demand for data centers, he assured analysts that Brookfield isn’t investing any capital “on a speculative basis.”
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Fears of a bubble aren’t the only thing that could complicate his push into AI, though.
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In December, the firm announced plans to work with Qai, a subsidiary of Qatar Investment Authority, to develop AI infrastructure in the Mideast nation and beyond. The US and Israel attacked Iran less than three months later, sparking an escalating regional conflict.
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Since then, military strikes have impaired the nation-state’s gas infrastructure, and drone attacks damaged at least three data centers in other Gulf states. A Qai spokesperson said the strategy remains the same, and Brookfield reiterated its commitment in March.
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Meanwhile, the entire industry faces questions about the value of data centers given uncertainty around how much they’ll be used given the rapid advances in chip technology. Across the firm, Brookfield has had a hand in asset sales between its own funds and portfolio companies, complicated deals that raise questions over whether sales are priced fairly.
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Rashid played a major role when Brookfield shifted a fund’s stake in a collection of European data centers from Brookfield-backed Data4 to two outside investors, Arjun Infrastructure Partners and Interogo Holdings. Another Brookfield fund deemed more suited for the mature assets then invested too.
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Sometimes Brookfield isn’t directly involved in these types of negotiations.
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Take Compass Datacenters, a Brookfield portfolio company. After initial discussions with potential buyers to sell several of its facilities didn’t lead to a deal, the company sold roughly $1 billion of the assets to another Brookfield-backed company, Centersquare. Brookfield recused itself from discussions over the deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
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The data centers were seen as a better fit for Centersquare, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. While Centersquare targets customers that seek to rent out capacity in smaller bites, Compass builds and operates big campuses for tech customers.
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Amid the debate over the future value of AI assets, Brookfield is accelerating its AI push. On the earnings call last month, Teskey said the Bloom Energy deal had been announced less than a year earlier.
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“We are already in conversations to expand that partnership,” he said, “not by percentages, but by multiples.”
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—With assistance from Andrew Harrer.
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English (US)