Data centers have divided America. The ire of everyday citizens continues to increase against a backdrop of enthusiastic and deep-pocketed Wall Street investors betting artificial intelligence is the economic engine of the future. And as data centers that power the answers for Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Muse, Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT spread across the U.S. landscape, the financial firms are attempting to pitch investors on AI infrastructure as part of a real estate allocation that can diversify a portfolio.

For the most part, the funds from alternative investment companies promising investors a piece of the physical infrastructure powering the AI economy remain the province of institutional investors like pension funds. But the trend has to a limited degree also dipped into the retail investor market. Alternative investments giant Blackstone has been at the forefront, creating the Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust, a newly formed real estate investment trust, or REIT, that trades on the NYSE, earlier this year.

“We saw this as an opportunity to capture the whole market of stabilized data centers and build a home in the public market where we think it belongs,” CEO Nick Pell said in a CNBC “Squawk on the Street” interview in May.

While many new data center projects across the U.S. remain subject to shifts in public and political opinion — and various moratoriums including in the states of New York and Texas — the Blackstone REIT is primarily focusing on data centers in already mature markets such as Northern Virginia and Dallas, where sprawling data centers have had a significant presence that predates the AI boom.

“It is the lowest risk way to play,” Pell said, adding that Blackstone can then hand-select data centers to offer investors from what it says is a $300 billion market. The company sold 87.5 million shares at $20 apiece in its mid-May debut. But the fund is down roughly 16% since then, with shares closing under $17 on Thursday.

Blackstone declined to offer further comment.

Equinix and Digital Realty Trust, data center developers that trade as REITs, have fared well longer-term, though their shares have stalled in the period since the BXDC launch.

The REIT sector has performed better this year than it typically does during periods of rising rates and higher bond yields, a situation in which the real estate sector is typically volatile due to the increased cost of lending and investors finding sectors of the stock market associated with income-generating assets less attractive. But most of the gains came earlier in the year before the bond market stress intensified, with many REIT investments selling off since August.

Pell described the opportunity on the…

Australian AI data center operator Firmus, which is backed by Nvidia, has withdrawn its planned mega initial public offering, citing market volatility and conditions, the company said in an emailed statement to CNBC.

Firmus said its board determined that the terms of the proposed offering did not adequately reflect the strength of its business and long-term growth outlook.

“The board therefore concluded that proceeding with the offer was not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders,” Firmus said in a statement. “Firmus will now pursue capital from the private markets and consider alternative public and private market options,” it added.

Firmus had reportedly planned to raise $5 billion in its IPO, pricing shares at A$11 apiece, which would have made it the second-largest new share sale in Australia’s history. The IPO valued the company at around $30.6 billion.  

In August, the company announced a $2 billion funding round backed by Nvidia, Coatue Management, Blackstone and Jane Street, bringing its total equity raised over the preceding year to more than $3 billion and its valuation to over $10.5 billion.

Firmus also announced agreements with Meta last month to provide GPU computing capacity at its AI data centers in Southeast Asia, built on Nvidia’s DSX platform, to support Meta’s AI research, model development and training.

At the Toronto International Film Festival last month, audiences saw “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo return to the big screen for her newest movie, “Prima Facie.”

Behind the scenes, there was a notable difference.

While “Wicked” was a massive Universal undertaking, Erivo’s new movie was produced in part by Camelback Productions, a smaller Hollywood venture aiming to fund independent film, according to CEO Anita Verma-Lallian.

She’s one of many private investors who are betting big on Hollywood as the moviegoing landscape shifts and a handful of indie films catch fire.

“It’s a different point of view to invest in these projects,” Verma-Lallian said. “It’s been so hard for people that are not in Hollywood to get into the industry … We’ve been able to fund stories that otherwise would have had a hard time getting greenlit by the traditional studio system.”

Camelback has also produced films “Doin’ It” and “Runner,” with stars such as Lilly Singh and Owen Wilson.

Big blockbuster films such as this year’s “The Odyssey” and “The Devil Wears Prada 2” are still the domain of legacy Hollywood studios. But with the number of annual releases dwindling, and with forthcoming consolidation among major players Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, there’s growing opportunity for smaller production companies to hit it big.

And while the business of making movies is still generally capital-intensive, recent breakouts including “Backrooms” and “Obsession” have found success on lower budgets.

To thread the needle, private capital is buying into production companies, acquiring the infrastructure and diving deeper into the financing structure of entertainment. For example, private equity firm Silver Lake backs talent agency WME, and Blackstone is behind content studio Candle Media.

According to consulting firm AlixPartners’ 2026 Media and Entertainment Industry Predictions report, private equity investors in media are growing with precision, especially as studios and audience aggregators increasingly become vertically integrated.

While the cost of entry has increased, private investors are eager to own intellectual property and audiences, the report said.

“Private equity can build scaled, defensible businesses that profit regardless of which large media player owns the next blockbuster, effectively ensuring a central role in the future media value chain,” the report read.

And while deep-pocketed companies such as Netflix and Amazon continue to raise the bar for content spend to make or acquire new media, traditional studios are finding new ways to keep pace.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has greenlit sweeping plans to widen access to private markets to individual investors — just as the industry’s rush into retail faces sharper scrutiny.

SEC chairman Paul Atkins said investor demand for private market investment opportunities is growing, adding that exposure to “one of the great engines of American enterprise” should “not be reserved for the wealthiest or for those deemed to be the most sophisticated.”

The proposals, approved Wednesday by the U.S. regulator, would seek to expand the number and type of ways for individuals to qualify as accredited investors.

“One of my priorities for the Commission is to explore ways to facilitate the ability of individual investors to participate in private markets, while at the same time protecting those investors from bad actors and fraud,” Atkins said in a statement.

The SEC proposals include permitting registered investment advisers (RIAs) to charge performance fees of up to 20% — a level comparable to fees historically used in the hedge fund and alternatives space — to draw more private asset managers into the retail wealth space.

The Trump administration has been keen to ease regulatory guardrails on private markets and expand access to ordinary investors. Last August, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order, titled ‘Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors’, which allows Americans to put more of their retirement plans into private equity and other alternatives.

But the move comes as the private assets industry’s push into the retail wealth space has drawn closer scrutiny, largely because the harder-to-sell, higher-yielding assets on offer do not fit neatly with retail investors’ expectations of easy access to their money.

Some so-called “semi-liquid” private credit business development vehicles saw a surge in redemption requests earlier this year, as investors — including retail clients — scrambled to withdraw their money amid concerns over risky software debt.

In February, Blue Owl Capital paused regular quarterly cash redemptions in its U.S. retail-focused Blue Owl Capital Corporation II fund, after a rise in investor withdrawal requests.

Other private credit managers, including Blackstone and Apollo, also received repurchase requests that exceeded their funds’ existing quarterly limits.

Blackstone’s Chief Operating Officer and President Jon Gray told CNBC in March that gating measures are “really a feature, not a bug” of private credit vehicles.

A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.

Calls for a slowdown in the pace of AI development have hit related stocks in recent days and could have broad ramifications for every industry involved. Real estate is no exception. 

While cloud, storage, enterprise IT and internet services all require data center capacity, artificial intelligence has quickly become the dominant driver of demand. AI could account for about 70% of global data center capacity demand by 2030, according to a report from McKinsey. The report said the capital outlay needed to meet total data center demand by 2030 will be nearly $7 trillion. Just the real estate portion of that could account for $3 trillion in investment in the next five years, according to JLL, which provides end-to-end data center real estate services globally.

Digital Realty and Equinix, two of the largest data center REITs, saw their stocks slump on Monday following the weekend warnings over AI advancements. 

Digital Realty CEO Andrew Power, however, said the pledges for a slowdown by major AI players Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI do not mean “pencils down” for AI and the real estate that supports it.

“There’s tremendous digital transformation happening that is not connected to AI,” said Power in an exclusive interview with Property Play. “There is tremendous cloud computing growth. Frankly, from my business lens, my seat, I think those demand trends, which are massive drivers of our business, have been stifled in these days of AI.”

Power said hyperscalers have had to choose between growing their commercial cloud businesses or allocating capacity to AI labs. He also said not all markets will be impacted equally. 

Digital Realty’s markets include Northern Virginia, Dallas, Chicago, Singapore, Tokyo, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, where Power said customers are competing for the same space.

“Our markets’ demand has been outpacing supply now for several years. There’s pent-up need for infrastructure in those markets. There’s locational sensitivity. Those workloads can’t choose any one of the 50 states,” said Power. “We have a global company portfolio, so we’ve got data sovereignty and support in other countries as well.” 

Analysts agree that a slowdown would not directly impact the physical needs of AI, especially given what a change of pace would actually affect, which is training in new models.

“The real…

Tropical Smoothie Cafe on Wednesday unveiled a new look as the restaurant chain prepares to continue its streak of rapid growth under Blackstone’s ownership.

“We are a company and a brand that has evolved significantly over the last few years and really over the last 10 years,” CEO Max Wetzel told CNBC. “We’re thinking about what our next 3,000 cafes look like, and so it’s a perfect time for us to roll this out.”

The redesign comes as Tropical Smoothie prepares to introduce itself to more consumers, both in the U.S. and internationally. The chain, which also sells bowls and wraps, surpassed $1.6 billion in system sales over the 12 months ended in June. By the end of the year, it is projecting it will exceed 1,800 locations nationwide, up 50% since the end of 2022. Tropical Smoothie has plans to expand outside of the U.S., too.

But its bold plans come during a tricky time for the restaurant industry. Diners have been eating out less frequently, trying to save money while paying more for gas, groceries and other necessities. As a result, eateries have been battling for a smaller pool of customers and often leaning on discounts to win them over.

Tropical Smoothie last tinkered with its logo a decade ago. The new design, which will be found everywhere from packaging for its wraps to its mobile app interface, uses brighter colors and a uniform font, in part to try to set it apart from quick-service competitors.

“The color palette is entirely created by the ingredients that you can find in our cafe,” Wetzel said. “All these ingredients are very different than a category that’s really dominated by browns and beiges and fried food.”

It also introduces the “Palm T,” a frond-shaped icon that will represent the brand in “shorthand,” particularly on digital platforms, according to Wetzel.

Tropical Smoothie has been working on the new branding for more than a year. But it is just one step toward what Wetzel called his ultimate goal: “building a best-in-class company.”

In late 2024, Tropical Smoothie consolidated national and local media budgets into a single advertising fund. Franchisees pay 5% of their gross sales in marketing fees, meaning that the fund will grow as system sales — lifted by successful marketing initiatives — increase.

Tropical Smoothie’s $80 million marketing budget is now deployed “much more effectively,” according to Wetzel. As a result, its national brand awareness has increased from 34% of consumers a year ago to 42%, he said.

Tropical Smoothie has also been trying to improve its cafe operations. Earlier this year, it started to rearrange its food and bowl assembly lines for better speed and accuracy.

Outside of the cafes, Tropical Smoothie has also invested in what Wetzel called “the digital front door” of the brand. By the end of the year, the company will roll out an improved version of its mobile app and website, all with the new…