Sep 3, 2026 · 1h 9m
AI Turns Infrastructure Into the New Investment Battleground
BlackRock's Tony Kim on AI's Next Winners?
The AI buildout is shifting opportunity and risk beyond software toward chips, energy, memory, data centers, and emerging hardware systems.
- 1AI is rebuilding the internet around specialized compute, gigawatt-scale data centers, energy systems, and memory.
- 2Investors must balance near-term infrastructure cash flows against longer-horizon bets on robotics, quantum computing, and optical networks.
- 3Following token flow across compute, models, data, context, and agents reveals where value may accrue in the enterprise stack.
Don't miss
Tony Kim reframes AI as a complete rebuild of internet infrastructure, contrasting traditional megawatt data centers with gigawatt-scale facilities.
The brief
BlackRock’s Tony Kim argues that AI has moved the economy from software-centric to compute-centric, elevating chips, hardware, energy, memory, and data centers.
At the RAISE Summit in Paris, Kim connects AI’s infrastructure demands to gigawatt-scale facilities, grid upgrades, new architectures, and a broader internet rebuild.
His investment framework spans immediate infrastructure demand and longer bets on robotics, quantum computing, optical networking, orbital data centers, and advanced power systems.
Kim also maps an enterprise stack from compute and models to data, context, and agents, suggesting investors follow where tokens flow through the system.
The episode’s central tension is time horizon: capital must fund today’s profitable bottlenecks without mistaking fashionable technologies for durable opportunity.
Featuring
BlackRock
Paris
Quantinuum
AssemblyAIListen to the full episode and explore every guest, topic, and moment on PodLume.