Aligned Chicago (Northlake) data center, Northlake, Illinois

Aligned Data Centers runs an operating data center, ORD-01, at 505 Northwest Avenue in Northlake, Cook County, Illinois, the first building on the company's 18.5-acre Chicago-area campus. The building opened in 2022 with 220,000 square feet and 48 megawatts of power, expandable to 60 megawatts.

Aligned broke ground the same week on a second building, ORD-02, aiming for more than 100 megawatts of power across 520,000 square feet. When construction began in 2021, Northlake Mayor Jeffrey Sherwin called it the city's third data center development: "Their success is our success."

Aligned points to Illinois sales-tax exemptions for qualifying data centers as one reason it built in Northlake, but Gov. JB Pritzker has since used his executive authority to pause the state program that grants those breaks to developers.

Aligned changed hands in July 2026, when a group made up of the AI Infrastructure Partnership, BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners and Abu Dhabi's MGX completed a $40 billion purchase of the Dallas-based company from Macquarie Asset Management, the largest data center deal on record. Chief executive Andrew Schaap and his team stayed on after the sale.