The Infrastructure Investor Podcast

Brookfield: Compute can be financed with infra cost of capital

2025-09-08 · 07:00 UTC ·PEI Group ·1 min read

Brief

Brookfield’s AI infrastructure push centers on an investment thesis that compute can be underwritten more like power, networks, or data centers than like speculative software. Bruno Alves and Sikander Rashid focused on how Brookfield plans to use its digital infrastructure and clean-energy footprint to support AI deployments, with emphasis on GPU-as-a-service financing, stabilized data centers, and sovereignty-driven demand for domestic compute capacity.

Why it matters

Sikander Rashid, Brookfield Asset Management’s global head of AI Infrastructure, said Brookfield’s new AI infrastructure strategy is built around treating compute as infrastructure that can potentially be financed at infrastructure-style cost of capital rather than typical venture or high-yield tech financing.

Key details

  • Brookfield framed its edge in AI infrastructure around scale in adjacent assets: the firm says it has invested more than $100 billion in digital infrastructure to date and is also the world’s largest private capital investor in clean energy, positioning it to pair power and data center buildouts for AI demand.
  • A central investment theme in the conversation was lowering compute financing costs through structures such as GPU-as-a-service, alongside opportunities in stabilized data centers and digital sovereignty requirements that may drive localized AI infrastructure investment.
Source evidence

title: Brookfield: Compute can be financed with infra cost of capital
author: PEI Group
contenttype: podcast
publication: The Infrastructure Investor Podcast
published: 2025-09-08T07:00:00+00:00
sourceurl: https://infrastructureinvestorpodcast.podbean.com/e/brookfield-compute-can-be-financed-with-infra-cost-of-capital/

word_count: 155

In this episode, Infrastructure Investor editor-in-chief Bruno Alves sits down with Sikander Rashid, global head of AI Infrastructure at Brookfield Asset Management . Brookfield is the largest manager in the world, according to our Infrastructure Investor 100 ranking . It also bills itself as the world’s “largest digital infrastructure investor – with more than $100 billion invested to date – and the world’s largest private capital investor in clean energy”. Both are handy as it launches its new AI infrastructure strategy . Unsurprisingly, we spend a lot of time talking about how that strategy will work, and why Brookfield decided to create it. A highlight of our conversation is how Brookfield intends to bring down the cost of capital for compute – via GPU-as-a-service, for example – and whether those investments will check the right infrastructure investment boxes. We also touch on the growing investment opportunity in stabilised data centres, digital sovereignty and much more.