The Infrastructure Investor Podcast

Want to access all four episodes now? Register for free at this link.

Critical Load: Inside the Data Centre Boom lifts the lid on one of the hottest and most contested sectors in private markets. Combining insight from major investors, operators, legal and consulting experts and PEI Group’s own research team, we go inside (literally) to explore the key themes driving growth in the sector.

In this first episode of the four-part podcast miniseries, we go behind the scenes of Infrastructure Investor Network’s Global Summit, set the stage with an explanation of what these facilities are, establish the scale of the data centre boom, and get to grips with some staggering investment statistics.

In this episode, editor-in-chief Bruno Alves sits down with Jan Vesely, a partner at EQT and one of the leaders of its new AI infrastructure strategy.

EQT is one of the many blue-chip infrastructure managers to launch a dedicated AI infrastructure strategy, but it’s done something different: it launched an open-ended strategy anchored by EdgeConneX, its global data centre platform, which it’s owned for six years, and formed over $9 billion of capital for in the space of three months.

In our discussion, Vesely explains why EQT doubled down on EdgeConneX as the foundation of its AI strategy; why the Swedish manager is a big believer in grid flexibility, and not just for data centres; its willingness to go fully behind the meter for the long term; how to manage counterparty risk, particularly for AI-native customers; and much more.

In this episode, editor-in-chief Bruno Alves sits down with Andrea Echberg, global head of Pantheon’s infrastructure team.

Echberg is a veteran of the infrastructure secondaries market, and the discussion traces the evolution of secondaries from a niche strategy to a core part of institutional portfolios. It also explores the impact of higher interest rates and liquidity constraints on deal activity on the sector, why investor appetite for infrastructure secondaries continues to grow, and how pricing, fundraising and competition are shaping the market.

The discussion also touches on what Echberg calls “the good, the bad and the ugly” of continuation vehicles; the opportunities created by long-term themes like digital infrastructure and the energy transition; non-GP sources of assets; and what the next phase of growth could look like as the market becomes increasingly institutionalised.

In this episode, Bruno Alves, Infrastructure Investor’s editor-in-chief, sits down with Americas editor Zak Bentley.

They start with the latest Infrastructure Investor 100 ranking of the world’s largest managers, and analyse what it tells us about the evolving shape of the global infrastructure market. With a total of $1.2 trillion raised over the last five years, the numbers point to a strong recovery – but also highlight just how concentrated the industry has become, with a handful of large-cap managers commanding the lion’s share of capital.

They also unpack our latest quarterly data on fund performance, highlighting the dispersion between top- and bottom-quartile funds that challenges infrastructure’s reputation as a consistently defensive asset class.

Finally, they touch on how strategies are evolving to reflect the digital capex supercycle we find ourselves in.

In this special episode based on a keynote interview on 25 March at our Global Summit in Berlin – editor-in-chief Bruno Alves sits down with Marc Ganzi, chief executive of DigitalBridge.

The discussion touched on concerns about AI data‑centre obsolescence, with Ganzi comparing GPU refresh cycles to radio upgrades on cell towers. He also talked through the huge arbitrage opportunity for operators that control their own power, stressed the importance of tight contract discipline, and highlighted the hidden risks many new entrants tend to overlook.

Finally, Ganzi looked ahead to the next wave of demand, lifting the curtain on robotics and the rise of AI factories, outlining they will require another 500GW of compute over the next 10-15 years.