The News
For all the talk of AI bubbles and market crashes, Scandinavian private-equity giant EQT says it’s making a bet that regardless of what happens with the frontier labs, AI is still going to need a massive amount of power, energy, chips, and data centers.
“All of a sudden, we find ourselves with $100 billion of energy assets, which are really the limiting factor for AI right now,” said Jean Salata, global chair of EQT, which has $400 billion in assets under management.
“A lot of people went out and signed tons of contracts with anybody — they call them ‘bragawatts.’ But signing something and delivering it on time, and with power connected, are two very different things,” Salata said. “Sophisticated investors understand that, but there’s a lot of things happening in the public markets where people are investing in things that they really don’t understand.”
EQT is a unique animal in an industry where exits have dried up, a generational bet on software companies looks vulnerable to AI, and higher interest rates have broken the math of cheap leverage and multiple expansion. Since 2018, PE firms have asked their investors for $1.5 trillion more capital than they’ve given back, and the industry is sitting on nearly $4 trillion worth of businesses it can’t sell.
