Brookfield’s chief executive says the AI boom is now a backbone investment for sovereigns and corporations, with capital commitments measured in the tens of billions.
Speaking at the firm’s investor day, Bruce Flatt describes how the Canadian asset manager is positioning itself to supply the infrastructure fueling the AI buildout, from power and data centers to compute capacity.
He also notes that while there’s froth in AI, he sees the space as a solid long-term investment opportunity.
“So remember what we do is build the backbone of the global economy. So we are building power data centers with compute capacity for the best of the world and for sovereign countries. And all of those have long-term contracts in place. And we’re behind the scenes providing them with enormous amounts of money.
We’re talking per center, $25, $50, $100 billion. This is enormous capital.
Of course, when excitement happens, and everyone wants to get in on something, there are mistakes made by people. So I’m not saying there will not be mistakes. But I’d say for us, we’re behind the scenes. We’ve been around this for a long time. And I think it’s a great investment area for a long period of time.”
The CEO frames AI as a multi-decade opportunity, with the United States uniquely positioned to dominate the global AI race.
“Remember, we’re building AI infrastructure for the next 40 or 50 years. That’s what we’re thinking about. The United States today has energy dominance, technology dominance, one of the largest economies in the world, one of the richest economies in the world, and a very entrepreneurial working class.
It is going to win, and we continue to put a lot of money behind that.
I think we’ve probably invested $30, $40, $50 billion in the US this year. The United States is going to be a great place to invest for a long period of time.”
Brookfield Asset Management oversees about $1 trillion in assets across infrastructure, renewable energy, private equity, and insurance, making it one of the world’s largest alternative investment firms.