AI data center provider Lambda announced Tuesday it raised $1.5 billion in a round led by TWG Global, a relatively new $40 billion investment firm formed by billionaires Thomas Tull, the former owner of Legendary Entertainment, and Guggenheim Partners founder and CEO Mark Walter.
TWG holds a variety of the billionaires’ assets, including Walter’s stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers and the new Cadillac F1 racing team. The firm also has a $15 billion fund to invest in AI anchored by Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Capital. TWG previously invested in a partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI and Palantir to sell AI agents to enterprises.
Now it’s backing Lambda, which operates a number of U.S. AI data centers. Lambda is a CoreWeave competitor, although it also sells its so-called “AI factories” to hyperscaler clouds. Earlier this month, Lambda announced a multi-billion dollar deal to supply Microsoft with AI infrastructure using tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs. (Nvidia is an investor in Lambda as well.)
Remember that Microsoft had a similar deal with CoreWeave and had bought about $1 billion worth of services from CoreWeave in 2024, it’s largest customer last year by a mile. Then OpenAI swooped in and signed a $12 billion deal with CoreWeave in March.
Meanwhile, deal watchers have been talking for months about Lambda looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation north of $4 billion. There was also talk of an IPO. Prior to this, Lambda raised a $480 million Series D in February, with an estimated valuation of $2.5 billion, according to Pitchbook.
Lambda’s $1.5 billion raise far outstrips those earlier whispers of what it was seeking. Whether its valuation also soared, we can’t confirm and Lambda declined to comment on that.
AI data center provider Lambda raises whopping $1.5B after multi-billion Microsoft deal
