Weekend Edition: Brookfield's Upson on AI's $7 trillion opportunity
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What is Brookfield’s overall AI investment strategy and why is AI called a “flywheel” for technology?
Well, do you remember before the war, AI was the talk of the town? Well, let's assume that the war gets settled somehow, and then we'll all get back to talking about AI again. So, in fact, let's do that now and talk to the guy who is driving the investment strategy for one of the world's largest investment firms, Stuart Upson, is driving the global AI investment strategy for Brookfield. And we talk to him this weekend. The morning
call from NAB with Phil Dobby.
The weekend edition. So AI is set to change the world, apparently. Have you heard that as well? Uh well it's already doing that, of course. Uh it seems there's a lot more yet to come. And we talked to Next DC a couple of weeks ago on the podcast about the uh data centers that they're building in Asia to meet this increasing demand that AI is placing on the need for data storage and particularly for processing. But there's many parts to the AI picture of Of course, and trying to understand all of that can be complicated. One asset management company that's been investing heavily in this space is Brookfield, who have traditionally focused a lot on real estate and infrastructure. So how does AI play into that mix?
Well, Stuart Upson is co president of Brookfield's Infrastructure Group as well as their regional head for Asia Pacific. And one of those working on their global strategy as well. Stuart, how many Business cards do you have?
I have a few. It depends on the audience. But um, you know, we we always like to pick up as many jobs as we can here, so I'm I'm happy to do it.
And being involved in the global strategy, obviously that that's important 'cause I mean you're you're taking a a view with others for the company about how you play in this an emerging AI space.
Yeah, yeah. And it's really um I I would say it's a narrow definition of strategy. We're we're really focused on the the big technological shifts that are coming along, really spawned by AI itself being the flywheel that's going to really speed up technological development. And so what we're trying to do is make sure that we're aware of all those changes that are happening. We're positioning the company and our uh our investments for those changes and and hopefully avoiding the risks that will come with them as well.
So I mean data centers obviously part of this because that's uh that's that's the element that the the big tech firms in in California um need to outsource because they can't build data centres everywhere themselves, it's just too big a job. So is that is that your focus or is there a bit more horizontal integration? I mean even delivering data centres obviously with the energy requirements is a big job 'cause you've got to make sure you've got the energy. energy supplies, the you know, the water, uh the the capability to deliver what's what's being demanded. So i is is that your focus or tell me tell me a little bit about where your emphasis is right now and I understand that might change of course over time.
Yeah, look, the the firm is very broad in what we do. We're across everything in um the real asset space and and the largest uh one of the largest alternative asset managers in the world. So uh in the infrastructure part of our business, then we've been investing in data centers for coming up ten years. Uh they've gone from pro-location type data centers to cloud type data centers to To uh now we've got GPU AI-focused uh data centers, all been an evolution. And then there's many other peripheral sort of uh infrastructure assets that support that, whether it's fiber type assets or tower assets or utility assets uh transporting the power to these uh data centers. And then in our um energy business, uh we've been doing
renewable power now uh for over 30 years. In fact, we joke um we've been doing renewable power since before it was called renewable power and it was hydros back in Canada. Um and that business uh is is one of the largest owners of renewable power and and battery storage in the world um and also owns importantly uh the business Westinghouse which is the um
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Brookfield’s overall AI investment strategy and why is AI called a “flywheel” for technology?
0:01–3:58
2
How does Brookfield view data centers as part of the AI infrastructure “data factories”?
3:58–8:18
3
Why is energy supply the biggest bottleneck for AI‑driven infrastructure projects?
8:18–12:32
4
What role do renewable power, nuclear energy and long‑term power‑of‑attorney (PPA) deals play in de‑risking AI investments?
12:32–17:15
5
How is Brookfield structuring its AI‑related capital‑intensive assets as “picks and shovels” rather than merchant compute?
17:15–21:58
6
What are the emerging opportunities in personal AI agents, embodied AI and robotics for investors?
21:58–25:23
7
How could quantum computing combined with AI reshape future investment themes?
25:23–29:24
8
What are the next‑generation AI sectors and partnerships Brookfield is targeting beyond data centers?
29:24–32:08