In 2025, Nvidia, Microsoft, BlackRock, and xAI acquired Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion. The largest transaction in the history of the data center sector.
We didn’t close that deal. Their leadership, the engineers, and a great sales and marketing organization did that. But for eight years, our team built and carried the brand that became impossible to ignore, from the database underneath it to the signage on the walls of the facilities themselves. This is what that work looked like.
Before Aligned, There Was CyrusOne
Our data center story didn’t start with Aligned. Before that, we worked with CyrusOne, one of the world’s largest data center providers, producing everything for them: building their digital footprint, running their SEO programs, designing print collateral, and supporting their events and facility launches. It was the same full-coverage model we would later bring to Aligned. One team handling whatever the brand required to grow. In 2022, CyrusOne was acquired for $15 billion.
Two data center brands. Two landmark acquisitions. $55 billion in combined exits. We know this industry, and we know what it takes to make a data center brand matter.
Where Aligned Started
When Aligned hired us in 2017, they had one facility in Plano, Texas. They also had five marketing vendors. Five vendors meant five versions of the brand, five sets of priorities, and no single team accountable for the whole picture. Branding was inconsistent, analytics were disorganized, and their database needed a full overhaul.
The First 90 Days: Fixing the Foundation
Before we could build anything, the infrastructure had to work. We spent roughly three months inside their data room fixing it. We audited the databases and deduped the lists. We set up their email-sending infrastructure through Salesforce Pardot so their communications could reach the right people at the right time. We restructured their data into something their teams could use, and rebuilt their first website.
None of that is glamorous work. All of it is the reason everything that came after performed well.
New Leadership, One Team
When new marketing leadership arrived. The decision that followed changed the engagement: replace the five vendors and bring everything under one roof. Ours.
That kind of consolidation is a bet. One team, accountable for everything, with nowhere to hide. It’s exactly the way we like to work, because when the brand, the content, the web, and the data all come from the same place, everything becomes one cohesive machine.
From there, Springbolt operated as Aligned’s branding agency, supporting the new marketing team as it scaled.
Prolific Is the Word
Over eight years, our team produced more than 7,500 deliverables for Aligned without missing a beat. As new marketing team members came aboard, we gave them our full unconditional support and made sure they were the heroes saving the day. The Aligned team coined the word ‘Alignify, and every new project that needed a brand makeover started with ‘Alignify.’
The Depth of the work is the Story:
- The launch playbook that let Aligned open facility after facility around the globe, a repeatable system covering everything a grand opening needs, which they ran fifty times across three continents.
- Their last three website iterations, built and managed by our team.
- Videos showing how their data centers function, along with animation and technical visualization of their products, so the people deciding whether to become a customer could understand the technology.
- The environmental graphics and wayfinding inside the facilities themselves. Walk into an Aligned data center, and you’re walking through our work: the signage on the walls, the graphics in the corridors, the story the building tells as you move through it.
- Event graphics for their trade shows around the world, plus the internal and facility communications their teams used every day.
- Their social media ecosystem, built and fed by us, along with their digital media.
- Dense technical subject matter turned into infographics people actually read.
- Print collateral by the pallet. A mountain of logos.
- And the merchandise. The brand went everywhere the company went, and we designed everything from socks to coffee mugs. If it carried the Aligned name, there’s a good chance it came through our team.
The Result
Here’s the part worth mentioning. This brand was built before AI was the talk of the town. It took a team of 12 people 8 years to produce 7,500 deliverables for Aligned. Simply put, we were prolific.
When a buyer group like Nvidia, Microsoft, BlackRock, and xAI evaluates a company, they’re buying the infrastructure, the team, and the trajectory. But the way a company presents itself over eight years, consistently, professionally, everywhere at once, is part of what makes it look like a company worth $40 billion. That presentation was our job, and we did it well.
Eight years. One facility to fifty. A $40 billion acquisition.
We didn’t close the deal. But we made Aligned’s brand identity impossible to ignore.
See the portfolio of work we delivered: springboltgroup.com/case-studies/aligned