Brookfield Asset Management, one of the world's largest alternative investment managers, is showing signs of a full-scale foray into the cloud infrastructure market. This move is seen as a strategic attempt to directly compete with cloud giants Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
According to a report by the US IT media outlet 'The Information', Brookfield plans to launch a new cloud computing business through its subsidiary 'Radiant'. This business will operate by directly leasing artificial intelligence (AI) chips to customers, with its core value proposition being to reduce the total cost of building and operating AI data centers. Unlike typical cloud service delivery models, the company aims to gain a competitive advantage through a hybrid strategy that enhances hardware accessibility.
Radiant is part of a $100 billion (approximately 144 trillion won) AI infrastructure project announced by Brookfield last November. The AI infrastructure fund supporting the plan has already invested $10 billion (approximately 14.4 trillion won), half of which came from major global partners such as NVIDIA (NVDA) and the Kuwait Investment Authority, demonstrating its influence.
The project will build new data centers in France, Qatar, Sweden, and other locations, with Radiant having priority access to these facilities initially. If Radiant fails to fully utilize this capacity, Brookfield plans to lease it to other cloud service providers using traditional leasing methods.
At the same time, Brookfield recently formed a $20 billion (approximately 28.8 trillion won) joint venture with the Qatar Investment Authority to continue its active investment in AI infrastructure in Qatar and the global market.
This comprehensive expansion is likely to put significant pressure on existing cloud service giants. In particular, Brookfield possesses a vast infrastructure portfolio in the global energy sector, which is widely considered to allow the company to gain control over the entire AI value chain. This is its fundamental differentiator from traditional IT cloud service providers.
Analysis indicates that once Brookfield truly enters the cloud market, AWS and Microsoft will not only face market pressure to clearly demonstrate the ROI of their AI investments, but will also have to address issues related to data center energy efficiency and infrastructure redesign. A new competitive landscape has officially begun in the AI-based market, with emerging forces wielding control of the energy sector as their weapon.
