Australia's Macquarie on Tuesday agreed to take a 15% stake in Applied Digital's high-performance computing business and invest up to $5 billion in the company's artificial intelligence data centers amid booming AI demand.

Macquarie’s funds will help Applied Digital complete construction of an AI data centre in North Dakota, and potentially finance additional ones.

Macquarie Group’s asset management unit has upped its exposure to the burgeoning data centre sector in the United States through an investment and funding deal with Applied Digital Corporation, worth up to $US5bn ($8.