BlackRock highlights AI value shift toward physical infrastructure

For the past few years, the AI trade has been synonymous with a handful of chipmakers and cloud software giants. BlackRock thinks that era is winding down, and the real money is about to flow somewhere far less glamorous: concrete, copper wire, and cooling systems. The firm’s Investment Institute has laid out a case that AI-driven value creation is migrating from semiconductors and software toward the physical infrastructure required to keep data centers humming. Think power plants, transmission networks, and the sprawling campuses of server farms that make large language models possible. The numbers behind the pivot BlackRock estimates that roughly 148 gigawatts of additional power capacity will be needed by the end of the decade to satisfy data center demand. For context, data centers consumed about 42 GW in 2025. That means the world needs to build more than three times the current power footprint in roughly five years. BlackRock also projects that global data center load will nearly double by 2030 compared to 2025 levels. The demand doesn’t stop at electricity generation either. It extends to fiber networks, grid interconnections, and the cooling infrastructure that keeps thous...