(HedgeCo.Net) AI isn’t just a tech story at the largest alternative firms—it’s a capex-and-credit story, a data-center story, an infrastructure story, and a deal-structure story. The biggest managers are now framing AI as a multi-year investment cycle that affects everything from power and real estate to corporate credit supply/demand. Blackstone’s 2026 perspectives explicitly elevate AI as a key factor shaping markets. Apollo’s 2026 credit outlook similarly emphasizes how AI capex and a returning M&A environment can influence credit opportunity sets.
Why this is trending across the biggest platforms
1) AI drives real assets and infrastructure demand.
Data centers, power generation, transmission, cooling, and industrial supply chains create huge investable surfaces for infrastructure and real estate capital.
2) AI changes corporate financing behavior.
If capex rises, balance sheets adjust—meaning more financing needs, more structured deals, and more opportunities for private credit providers that can write large, tailored checks.
3) AI accelerates M&A and sponsor activity.
Apollo’s outlook points to M&A returning as conditions improve—another driver of credit issuance, refinancing, and event-driven capital needs.
How the largest alternative firms monetize it
- Infrastructure equity: owning power and digital backbone assets
- Real estate: data-center platforms and adjacent logistics/industrial buildouts
- Private credit: financing capex-heavy expansion and acquisition activity
- Opportunistic credit: stepping into transitional or mispriced risk as old models reprice
- Secondaries: providing liquidity as portfolios rebalance toward AI-linked exposures
The core trend: AI is turning into a “macro industry” that touches every private-market sleeve. The largest firms are trending toward strategies that capture the picks-and-shovels economy—not just software winners, but the entire financed buildout that AI requires.