Artificial intelligence still seemed the stuff of science fiction when a real estate developer named Chad Williams bought a plot of land, roughly half the size of a football field, in Overland Park, Kan.

Mr. Williams, who had taken over his family’s business of car lots and office furniture suppliers, used the land in 2003 to build his first data center, a big, boxy warehouse housing powerful computers.

More than two decades later, the company Mr. Williams built, Quality Technology Services, is at the heart of one of Wall Street’s biggest gambits: the race to profit from artificial intelligence.

The private equity giant Blackstone spent $10 billion in 2021 to acquire QTS, and has been pouring billions more into the company to help it expand its data centers. These giant buildings house the backbone of the internet — and more recently artificial intelligence systems — using technology and heating and cooling systems to keep the computers inside the centers humming.

This largely unglamorous industry is critical for A.I. leaders to get right. QTS leases its facilities to companies like Amazon and Meta and supplies the electricity and water needed to power and cool their computers.