BlackRock highlights infrastructure and power sectors as new frontiers for AI investments ahead of 2026

LONDON , BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said it remains constructive on artificial intelligence for 2026 but expects investors to broaden their focus beyond the big US technology names that dominated 2025.

In its Investment Directions report, BlackRock cited the results of a recent client survey showing that among 732 companies questioned in the EMEA region, only about one in five regarded the largest US tech groups as the most compelling AI investment opportunity. Instead, more than half of respondents favoured providers of the power required by data centres and 37% nominated infrastructure as their top AI-related investment choice. Only 7% of respondents characterised the AI theme as a market bubble.

“It’s increasingly important to risk-manage megacap and AI exposure while also capturing differentiated upside opportunities,” Ibrahim Kanan, BlackRock’s head of core U.S. equity, said in the report accompanying the survey data.

The shift in investor sentiment reflects growing concern among some market participants about returns on capital and rising borrowing costs associated with the multitrillion-dollar build-out by Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet. BlackRock’s public materials and research argue that AI is accelerating demand for physical infrastructure , notably data centres and the power systems that feed them , and that this creates distinct opportunities in utilities and global infrastructure.

According to BlackRock’s analysis, data-centre electricity demand is expected to expand rapidly: one firm note projects roughly 20% annual growth through the end of the decade, lifting demand from around 4% of current US electricity consumption to roughly 10%–12% by 2030. BlackRock’s 2026 Private Markets Outlook puts the investment need for data-centre capacity and related infrastructure in stark terms, estimating around $1.5 trillion of required investment as cloud migration and AI-driven processing intensify.

Those strategic priorities are already reflected in BlackRock’s deals and product positioning. In March 2025 BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), Microsoft and MGX announced the formation of the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), with NVIDIA and xAI joining as partners, an initiative that the firms said seeks to mobilise up to $100 billion to expand AI-capable data centres and supporting energy infrastructure. Earlier materials from September 2024 described a similar Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership with a potential $100 billion investment target aimed at strengthening US competitiveness in AI.

Industry reporting has further documented the partnership’s commercial activity. Tom’s Hardware reported that the consortium, including BlackRock, Microsoft, Nvidia and xAI, agreed to acquire Aligned Data Centers in a transaction valued at around $40 billion, a deal said to deliver approximately 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity across campuses in the US and Latin America; the acquisition was reported as expected to close in the first half of 2026.

BlackRock has also signalled portfolio-level tilts consistent with the survey findings. Its Multi-Asset Income model portfolios have favoured US utilities and global infrastructure exposure as a way to provide ballast and to capture rising power demand tied to AI workloads.

Taken together, the company’s public statements and deal activity underline a thesis that AI’s investment story extends beyond software and “megacap” platform providers to the physical systems that enable large-scale model training and inference. Industry data and BlackRock’s own research suggest those enabling assets will require sustained capital allocation over the coming years, creating opportunities for investors who prioritise power, cooling and real-estate-linked infrastructure alongside selective technology exposure.