Investors continue to bet on the AI boom, but this year they see energy and power providers as the most compelling opportunities to increase exposure to the AI theme, the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, said in its 2026 Investment Directions report this week.
Respondents in a recent survey of hundreds of BlackRock clients believe in the AI theme and its value, but they are seeking to diversify in and around AI, expanding their exposure beyond the Magnificent Seven, hyperscalers, and Big Tech.
More than half—54%—of BlackRock’s survey participants believe that energy providers are the most compelling opportunity to increase exposure to the AI theme this year. A total of 37% responded in the multi-select question that infrastructure would be the most compelling opportunity around AI, and just 20% see the U.S. mega-cap tech giants as the most compelling play in AI.
That’s not to say that investors are backing off from the AI boom, as only 7% believe the AI theme is a bubble. They just seek greater diversification around the hottest theme in the markets in recent years. And power supply, with energy providers, is the biggest growth opportunity, according to BlackRock’s survey of clients.
“As investors look to build exposure to the AI theme, interest is broadening from core AI technology to the wider ecosystems underpinning it,” BlackRock said in its report.
“In our recent survey, clients highlighted energy and power providers as the most compelling opportunity, amid accelerating AI-driven power demand.”
Investors, therefore, have started to bet on the most critical bottleneck in the AI boom—the soaring electricity demand to power the data centers.
“Today’s US market is historically concentrated – but the earnings outlook isn’t. With the rest of the S&P 500 expected to catch up to the Magnificent 7 in EPS growth through 2026, it’s increasingly important to risk-manage mega cap and AI exposure while also capturing differentiated upside opportunities,” Ibrahim Kanan, Head of Core US Equity, Fundamental Equities, at BlackRock, noted in comments to the report.
The global AI race is also an energy race, as AI is highly energy-intensive, according to the world’s biggest asset manager.
Goldman Sachs Research, for example, expects data center power demand to surge 175% by 2030 compared to 2023 levels. This jump in electricity demand would be the equivalent of adding another Top 10 power-consuming country.
The investment bank continues to see the reliability of power and water as “a multi-year investment theme amid rising demand growth, aging infrastructure and Adaptation to extreme temperatures/weather events,” Goldman’s analysts wrote in an October report.
“We continue to see attractive investment opportunities across the power supply chain driven by power demand growth acceleration — in the US, to levels not seen since the 1990,” Goldman Sachs says.
So big is the demand that the aging grid infrastructure in key regional U.S. markets cannot cope with all requests, with grid investments lagging behind soaring power demand.
At the current rate of interconnection requests and grid capacity, the U.S. could face a power crunch by 2030, Samantha Dart, Goldman Sachs’ co-head of global commodities research, said at a conference earlier this month.
Goldman Sachs research analysts said in an October report that data center power demand growth alone would accelerate total U.S. power demand growth through 2030 by 1.2 percentage points to an overall level of 2.6%, the highest growth in America’s electricity demand since the 1990s.
“We aren’t adding enough capacity,” Dart said this week at the Goldman Sachs Energy, CleanTech and Utilities Conference in Miami, adding that if the issue remains unaddressed, the U.S. could lose the AI race with China.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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