AI’s Next Bottleneck Is Infrastructure

Nuveen argues that the AI investment cycle is beginning to move beyond chips and data centres toward the physical systems required to power them.

• Data centres can be built in 12–36 months, but electricity generation and transmission capacity take considerably longer—creating scarcity value for utilities capable of supplying new demand.

• The scale is already enormous: Meta’s Hyperion data-centre campus in Louisiana is described as a 20-year, 5 GW project with more than $50 billion in total project costs.

• Meanwhile, listed infrastructure could offer an increasingly useful counterweight to technology exposure. The report notes that the correlation between infrastructure and tech returns has recently turned negative.

Read the full commentary for why the AI boom may increasingly reward the companies supplying electrons, grids and physical capacity—not just compute.