Investors shift AI bets to energy and infrastructure over megacap tech

Investors are recalibrating how they expect to capture AI-driven gains, steering allocations toward energy providers and infrastructure rather than the largest U.S. technology companies, BlackRock says in its Investment Directions report. The world’s largest asset manager sent an accompanying survey of 732 EMEA clients that found more than half prefer companies supplying power for data centres and 37% ranked infrastructure as their top AI-related investment choice. By contrast, only about one-fifth of respondents said the biggest U.S. tech groups represented the most compelling AI opportunity.

The findings underscore a shift in sentiment after a year in which AI and large-cap technology stocks dominated markets and global equity returns. In 2025 the sector’s rally was driven in large part by a multitrillion-dollar build-out of data-centre capacity by Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet. That spending binge, BlackRock’s survey notes, has prompted investor concerns over uncertain returns on capital and rising corporate borrowing among the megacaps, encouraging clients to seek exposure to the physical inputs of AI scale-up instead.

Only 7% of the respondents said they believed the AI theme was a market bubble, suggesting broad confidence in AI’s underlying economic potential even as preferences for where to place bets evolve. BlackRock says it remains constructive on AI for 2026 but intends to broaden focus beyond “pure” AI plays and concentrated megacap positions. “It’s increasingly important to risk-manage megacap and AI exposure while also capturing differentiated upside opportunities,” Ibrahim Kanan, head of core U.S. equity at BlackRock, says in the report.

The market implications are material. A migration of capital from software platforms into electricity generators, grid firms, data-centre construction and related infrastructure could alter sector performance and valuation dynamics. Energy and utility companies typically trade on different cash-flow profiles and regulatory regimes than high-growth technology firms, and increased investor interest may narrow the valuation premium that drove megacap dominance in 2025. For fixed-income markets, the focus on capital-intensive infrastructure could translate into new corporate financing patterns and influence credit markets if utilities and infrastructure firms step up borrowing for grid upgrades and capacity expansion.

Policy and supply-side constraints will shape how attractive those investments are. Delivering reliable power for sprawling data-centre campuses requires grid upgrades, permitting, and often coordination with governments on transmission and renewable supply. That raises the prospect that public policy, from permitting reform to targeted infrastructure spending, will be an important determinant of which companies can capture AI’s second-order gains.

For portfolio construction, BlackRock’s survey signals a strategic diversification away from concentrated platform risk toward more distributed exposure across the economy. If broadly replicated by other investors, this repositioning could make the next phase of AI-driven returns less narrowly concentrated and more tied to the industrial and energy transition that underpins the digital expansion. Investors and policymakers alike will be watching whether capital flows follow words and whether shoreside industries can scale fast enough to meet an AI-driven surge in electricity and physical infrastructure demand.