AI-driven demand is fueling a massive need for infrastructure, with power, compute, and data-center capacity acting as the main bottlenecks; a global energy infrastructure push could total roughly $23 trillion through 2040 as AI adoption accelerates.

In software, investment themes emphasize resilience through proprietary data, embedded workflows, and mission-critical functions, with valuations showing premium multiples for AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and healthcare software, while commoditized horizontal software faces compression.

A mid-year private markets outlook argues that AI is reshaping nearly every asset class at once, creating opportunities and risks across venture capital, buyouts, private credit, infrastructure, and public equities.

The report warns AI won’t be a universal tailwind; success will hinge on precise value capture and resilient business models rather than hype, as market idiosyncrasies grow.

Policy and sovereign priorities are aligning with private capital, with governments emphasizing energy security, semiconductor manufacturing, digital infrastructure, and critical supply chains, providing a structural lift to infrastructure investment.

Private credit is increasingly backing AI-related infrastructure and capital needs, highlighted by large deals such as Blue Owl and Meta’s $27 billion Hyperion data-center financing and the $40 billion Aligned Data Centers deal.

Beyond data centers, enabling infrastructure—power producers, fiber networks including dark fiber, and data-center service providers—offers durable, less AI-disruptible opportunities with meaningful downside protection.

AI is reshaping software competition between AI-native entrants and incumbents, presenting two underwriting challenges: capital-intensive new entrants and incumbents whose economics may be disrupted by AI.

In venture funding, AI investment reached about $356 billion in the first half of 2026, making up 86% of all venture dollars, with megadeals over $50 million dominating, concentrated in players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, and growth-stage valuations rising.