JPMorgan says the biggest long-term opportunity tied to AI infrastructure is not owning data centers themselves.
In a new JPMorgan Asset Management Alternative Realities podcast, Jed Laskowitz, the bank’s global head of private markets, says AI is only part of a much broader demand shock hitting global energy systems, noting that headlines have narrowed the conversation too much.
“Yeah, the AI needs are only about a third of the demand. I mean, I know the headlines are about AI, but it’s a much bigger story. And just go back to [April 2025], 60 million people without power in Spain and Portugal for 10 hours.”
According to Laskowitz, reliability is becoming the central issue, noting that energy infrastructure is now a central theme for the bank’s investment approach.
“Energy reliability, as there’s more strain on the grids, becomes important. We want to power the data centers, not own the data centers.”
Anton Pil, Head of Global Alternative Investment Solutions, reinforces the logic behind that strategy.
“At the end of the day, power is fungible. If data centers in five years turn out that there are too many of them, power is going to be needed to build new factories, to heat homes, et cetera.”
In contrast, he says physical data center assets are far less flexible.
“A data center building that’s in the middle of a desert somewhere, that’s 2,000 acres and half a billion dollars can’t get moved. So I think from a sort of an AI perspective, an AI infrastructure perspective, I think what Jed describes as sort of being the power play is probably the safest risk-adjusted way of actually playing a lot of AI stories as well.”
The comments highlight a growing view among institutional investors that electricity generation, transmission and grid resilience may ultimately be a more durable way to monetize AI’s rise than betting on data center real estate itself.
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