BlackRock has noticed a shift in investors' priorities in the AI market. What are they choosing now?
Multi-billion dollar investments by IT giants are causing growing concerns among market participants
BlackRock: AI investors in 2026 are choosing energy over bigtech / Photo: Shutterstock.com/FOTOGRIN
In 2026, the investment potential in the field of artificial intelligence remains, believes the world's largest asset management company BlackRock, but it intends to slightly expand its focus. This was reported by Reuters, citing a report by Investment Directions, based on a survey of investors conducted by BlackRock.
Details
Investors expecting to bet on AI development in 2026 are increasingly favoring energy and infrastructure companies over the major Wall Street tech corporations that dominate markets in 2025, BlackRock observed.
Only one-fifth of the 732 companies surveyed in BlackRock's EMEA client survey cited the largest U.S. technology groups as the most attractive AI investment opportunity. Meanwhile, more than half of respondents said they rely on power providers to run their data centers, and more than a third (37%) named infrastructure as their top investment choice in AI.
"It is becoming increasingly important to manage the risks associated with mega-cap companies and AI while finding differentiated sources of growth," Ibrahim Kanan, head of U.S. equities at BlackRock, told Reuters.
At the same time, only 7% of respondents said that they consider the topic of artificial intelligence to be a market bubble.
Context
The multi-trillion dollar race to build data centers between tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet is heightening investor concerns about uncertain returns on these investments and rising borrowing costs, BlackRock has found out. This is forcing investors to look for new investment ideas, Reuters reports.
Mizuho analysts in early January proposed their list of stocks to invest in AI infrastructure. The list includes Nvidia, the global market leader in artificial intelligence processors, chip maker Broadcom, and Lumentum Holdings, a company that supplies optical solutions for data centers, which is little known to a wide range of investors.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
