Citi is making one of its most ambitious bets in years, launching a dedicated AI Infrastructure group in late February with the explicit goal of carving out a leadership role in what it estimates could be a $3 trillion capital build-out by 2030.
The new team brings together specialists from across the investment bank — technology, communications, energy, power, real estate, and even crypto — to move faster on financing the massive data centers, power plants, and supporting infrastructure required for the AI revolution.
“This is our time,” said Achintya Mangla, who joined Citi in the fall of 2024 as head of financing in the investment bank after a 22-year career at JPMorgan. Mangla, a key architect of the initiative, is setting a high bar.
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“No bank is an incumbent. No bank,” he told Business Insider. “We have the opportunity.”
For Citi and CEO Jane Fraser, the push represents a high-stakes test of whether the bank’s long-running restructuring can finally position it to compete more aggressively for the most prestigious, and lucrative “lead left” mandates on major financings and advisory assignments, a territory long dominated by its bigger Wall Street rivals.
Other major banks are equally aggressive in their push to grab their AI infrastructure share. Fred Turpin, global chair of investment banking at JPMorgan, recently described the data center build-out as “the largest investment cycle in the history of capitalism.”
Yet Mangla believes Citi’s approach can help it steal market share. While rivals boast longer track records in data center financing and still lead the league tables, the gaps are narrowing.
According to Dealogic data through April, Citi has climbed to fifth place in data center debt activity this year, up from sixth last year and eighth in 2024. In overall U.S. M&A activity for the most recent quarter, Citi ranked fourth, behind only Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley.
Since March 2025, the bank has arranged more than $75 billion in financing for data center construction, supporting roughly 6.1 gigawatts of IT capacity — about half of Con Edison’s projected peak summer demand for 2025. One notable deal was the financing for Blue Owl and STACK Infrastructure’s $18 billion Stargate campus in New Mexico, which closed last year.
Mangla, who previously ran equity capital markets at JPMorgan, argues that deals of this scale demand a fundamentally different mindset. Banks must now assess a broad spectrum of risks — power supply, land availability, construction execution, specialized GPU hardware, and long-term offtake contracts with hyperscalers such as Meta and Microsoft.
Because these projects move at breakneck speed, traditional siloed handoffs between teams can create dangerous bottlenecks. Citi’s solution has been to collapse those capabilities into a single, cross-functional group.
“There is not one single person that can do all this,” Mangla said. “What we really need is problem solving” and the ability to be “agnostic in providing a capital solution whether it is debt, mezzanine, equity, or anything in the middle.”
The bank has moved quickly to bolster its bench. In recent months it has hired several experienced dealmakers, including Eric Farina from Morgan Stanley as co-head of Infrastructure Financing & Capital Solutions in debt capital markets (alongside Rob Cascarino), Ric Spencer from Bank of America as vice chair of technology investment banking, Alex Watkins from JPMorgan as head of technology financing, and Ashish Agrawal from JPMorgan as global co-head of real estate, lodging, and gaming investment banking.
Mangla said the core leadership team is now in place, though the bank remains open to bringing in exceptional junior talent if the right candidates emerge.
Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, sees the AI Infrastructure group as a pivotal moment in Citi’s multi-year turnaround.
“This would transcend them into a major player with the major money center banks in a way that they weren’t competing before,” he said. “It’s the last real big step for Jane to accomplish, to be able to say the turnaround is done.”
For a bank that has spent years shedding businesses, simplifying its structure, and rebuilding credibility after a series of setbacks, success in the AI infrastructure race could mark a defining chapter. Some believe that if Citi can translate its cross-functional model and aggressive hiring into meaningful league-table gains and lead mandates, it may finally close the gap with its more established rivals.