(HedgeCo.Net) If 2024–2025 was the era of “AI everything,” 2026 is shaping up as the year the largest real-asset platforms try to own the pipes and power behind it. Brookfield’s newest move—reported plans to start a cloud business called Radiant—signals a dramatic attempt at vertical integration: leasing chips inside data centers directly to AI developers, anchored by a dedicated AI fund and tied to Brookfield’s broader infrastructure footprint. Reuters
Why this matters: AI capex is becoming an infrastructure supercycle
Brookfield’s push is explicitly aimed at controlling more of the AI value chain, linking capital, real estate, energy, and (now) compute capacity. The Reuters report ties Radiant to a $10 billion AI fund, including projects across multiple geographies, and references Brookfield’s previously announced $100 billion AI infrastructure program. Reuters
For allocators, this is a new chapter in “alternatives”: infrastructure isn’t just toll roads and pipelines anymore—it’s data centers, grid upgrades, and energy transition capacity built to serve AI workloads.
The Brookfield framing: a defining moment for global markets
Brookfield’s 2026 outlook emphasizes private credit growth in infrastructure, real estate, and asset-based finance, while warning that return dispersion will rise—meaning specialization and structuring will drive outcomes. Brookfield Asset Management (BAM)+1 This is exactly the environment where a scale platform can bundle:
- long-duration infrastructure equity,
- infrastructure credit,
- and operational control over assets with embedded pricing power.
What’s “new” today: “compute-as-infrastructure”
If Brookfield succeeds, Radiant would represent a shift in how institutions may think about exposure: not “cloud tech,” but “compute capacity” as a contracted, infrastructure-like cash-flow stream—underwritten with real assets and energy access.