Macquarie will invest up to $8 billion in Nasdaq-listed Applied Digital, funding the construction of a major data centre to service the fast-growing demand for artificial intelligence processing in the United States.

The investment, through its Macquarie Asset Management division, comes months after the sale of Australian data centre giant AirTrunk delivered a windfall for the firm. AirTrunk, which runs a network of data centres across Asia, had been mooted for a $10 billion ASX listing in 2023. By September last year, when it sold, the company had a $23.5 billion valuation.