Brookfield Asset Management: Doubling Down on AI Infrastructure as the Market Wavers

A Record Quarter, Built on AI

Brookfield Asset Management reported its strongest fundraising quarter ever in Q2 2026, raising $77 billion and pushing fee-related earnings to $808 million, up 20% year-over-year. The headline is the company's accelerating push into AI infrastructure. “we expect 2026 will be a record year for Brookfield and not by a small margin.” — Connor David Teskey, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-08-05 The new dedicated AI infrastructure fund (BAF) held its first close, and partnerships with Bloom Energy, NVIDIA, and the U.S. Department of Energy are scaling rapidly. Sikander Rashid, Global Head of AI Infrastructure, framed the opportunity as central to the entire firm: “AI is not only shaping our AI infrastructure strategy it is becoming an increasingly important theme across all of Brookfield.” — Sikander Rashid, Global Head of AI Infrastructure · 2026-08-05

Though the theme is not new—management has been touting AI since at least 2025—the magnitude of the current commitments is. The Bloom Energy framework was expanded fivefold to $25 billion, the Paducah, Kentucky AI factory could attract up to $100 billion of private investment, and a $17.5 billion DOE commitment backs Westinghouse reactors. The company is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for AI infrastructure, from power generation to compute.

Oaktree and the Credit Pivot

The completion of the Oaktree acquisition this quarter removes a long-standing overhang and gives Brookfield full control of a major credit platform. Connor Teskey sees credit markets as robust but selective: “We see credit markets as incredibly robust right now. ... but it's the small kind of pockets of uncertainty and very specific corners of credit markets.” — Connor David Teskey, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-08-05 This aligns with the company's strategy to avoid the most crowded parts of private credit, such as sponsor-led direct lending, while focusing on real assets and asset-backed finance. This disciplined positioning was evident in the wealth channel, where redemption requests in the non-traded BDC fell below 5%.

Valuation and Market Mood

Despite the strong operating story, the market has been cooler on AI infrastructure names recently. In the 30-day price tape, AI data centers appear among the steepest decliners, and High performance computing also fell. That tension between company momentum and market sentiment is the core of the current story. Brookfield's shares have rebounded 16.5% over the past 90 days, but remain 17% below their mid-2025 peak.

Financially, the company continues to compound. Total revenue in the latest quarter hit $1.3 billion, up 24% year-over-year., and management repurchased $376 million of stock in Q2, citing undervaluation. Hadley Marshall noted: “we believe our shares are meaningfully undervalued and so we've been more active in repurchases.” — Hadley Marshall, Chief Financial Officer · 2026-08-05

The Bet Ahead

The risk is that Brookfield is piling into a theme the market is starting to question. But management argues that discipline is the differentiator. Sikander Rashid:

We're building the backbone of AI, the infrastructure that underpins the AI economy. As such, we will build AI infrastructure backed by hard assets and long-term contracts where we seek a return on and off of our capital over the contract term.