Nuveen Hits $1.3B First Target for Investing to Power Industrial Electrification Future
The reshoring, electrification and digitalization of the economically developed world’s industrial sector is attracting tremendous levels of investment from venture capitalists who see opportunity in building out power generation for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and growing domestic supply chains for technology.
Global investment manager Nuveen just achieved success on its $1.3 billion first round raise of capital commitments for the new Credit Fund II (EPIC II). The EPIC II fund is a planned $2.5 billion target private credit strategy aimed at supplying private infrastructure credit for companies working on expanding power generation to meet growing energy demand from industrial electrification, reindustrialization and AI-enabled data centers.
The geographical focus of EPIC II will be in North America, Europe and other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Nuveen recently closed out its EPIC I fund.
The EPIC II strategy is somewhat fuel agnostic and plans to invest across many energy resources, including renewables, energy storage, hydrocarbons, midstream refining and infrastructure and liquified natural gas. Research firm McKinsey’s 2024 Global Energy Perspective anticipates that global demand will rise by as much as 18% by 2050.
Data center demand, accelerated by the global race to expand AI training models and development, could increase as much as 125 GW in the U.S. alone by the 2030s, according to multiple reports. This will require a buildout of additional power generation plants, renewable arrays and microgrids.
"Bringing together the resiliency of infrastructure assets and the private credit playbook that utilizes covenant protection and structural flexibility has unlocked a strong level of investor demand across the globe," said Don Dimitrievich, Nuveen’s senior managing director & portfolio manager, Energy Infrastructure Credit, in a statement.
"Investors are increasingly interested in strategies that capitalize on their conviction in the growing global energy demand brought on by digitalization, electrification and reindustrialization while also seeking downside risk mitigation to guard against macro volatility, and inflationary and geopolitical risk," Dimitrievich added. "As we reach this latest milestone, we remain focused on deploying capital into resilient companies and projects across the energy and power ecosystem that capture this historic market opportunity while providing durable income potential."
Among key investors in the $1.3 billion first round of Nuveen’s EPIC II is a Canadian pension fund manager and TIAA, which owns Nuveen and handles retirement services in the academic, research, medical and governmental sectors.
More than half of the investment commitments came from outside the U.S., including global insurance entities and Asian public and corporate pension funds.
In its 2025 mid-year outlook report, Nuveen noted that much is changing in the U.S., including impact from tariffs and economic factors. Even so, the momentum of AI and digitization continues to accelerate.
“Investment in information processing equipment, needed to support the AI revolution, is running almost 20% higher than last year, vastly eclipsing its more pedestrian pace of the preceding decade,” reads Nuveen’s 2025 midyear outlook.
Private equity firms also are exploring more aggressive investment in the energy sector. Last month, Blackstone announced a joint venture with Pennsylvania-based utility holding company PPL Corp. to build out gas-fired generation to power data centers.
Data tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Meta and other tech giants also are creating partnerships with energy entities around small modular reactors and conventional nuclear, natural gas and renewables to meet the future demand from AI and cloud-based computing expansion.
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Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor
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For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].
Rod Walton has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World.
EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.