Nvidia Seeks To Tap Into Global Real Estate Firm’s Data Center Business

An Nvidia spokesperson tells CRN that the AI computing giant recently partnered with global real estate firm CBRE to tap into the company’s data center solutions business for AI expansion opportunities in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

As Nvidia expands its roster of partners this year, the AI computing giant recently added one that doesn’t fit the mold of solution providers, OEMs or cloud providers but has evolved in recent years to service growing opportunities around AI data centers.

That new partner is global real estate firm CBRE, which has joined the Nvidia Partner Network (NPN) as a solutions advisor consultant, said Rob Cooper, head of CBRE’s data center advisory in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), in a LinkedIn post last week.

[Related: Nvidia Channel Chief Lists 2025 Priorities For Growing North American Partner Roster]

In his LinkedIn post announcing the partnership, Cooper wrote that CBRE is “uniquely positioned to guide clients in identifying and securing optimal data centre solutions and deploying accelerated AI infrastructure at scale.”

An Nvidia spokesperson told CRN via email that its NPN relationship with CBRE is based around the firm’s data center solutions business and not CBRE’s commercial real estate business.

“The CBRE data center consulting business oversees significant data center capacity in regions including EMEA and the U.S. to support enterprises that would like to expand their Nvidia AI operations. CBRE’s commercial real estate business is outside the scope of our current NPN relationship,” the Nvidia representative said.

CBRE declined to comment.

According to a web page on CBRE’s United Kingdom website that was linked in Cooper’s LinkedIn post, the firm’s data center advisory business can help customers find colocation facilities with the proper power, cooling and network capacity for AI-ready data centers. The practice also possesses “unique operational and logistics capabilities” when it comes to “sourcing, inventory management and installation” for GPU deployments.

CBRE’s partner type in the NPN partner program is a solution advisor, which according to Nvidia’s website, is a company “whose primary business model is to provide consultation services and expert advice to customers looking to implement Nvidia products, Nvidia-based solutions and technologies.”

A senior executive at a top U.S. Nvidia channel partner told CRN that the AI computing giant’s new partnership with CBRE is a “smart move” because three of the biggest challenges with building next-generation AI data centers are “power, cooling and space,” especially when considering Nvidia’s recently launched Blackwell-based systems.

“The amount of power draw requires a specialized type of power infrastructure, which then requires a specialized type of real estate and facility to be able to handle that,” said Andy Lin, CTO at Houston-based Mark III Systems.