June 3 - Goldman Sachs said private infrastructure and real estate investors are likely to take on a larger financing role as companies scale up spending on AI-driven data centers and move beyond conventional funding channels.
In a note issued on Tuesday, the brokerage raised its combined capital expenditure forecast for the four largest hyperscalers - Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet - to $5.3 trillion for fiscal years 2025 through 2030. That updated projection follows an earlier forecast made before first-quarter earnings that put combined capex for the same period at $4.5 trillion.
Goldman said firms building out the data-center ecosystem will tap a mix of public markets, securitized vehicles and private capital to secure the scale and scope of funding required. The firm added that private infrastructure and real estate investors will become increasingly important participants in financing these projects.
"Private infrastructure and real estate will play an even larger role in the years ahead," Goldman said, noting that the lines separating private infrastructure and real estate are blurring as data-center developments span categories such as land, power, buildings and equipment.
The brokerage pointed to characteristics of private infrastructure that it expects will support further growth, including structured income generation and inflation-protection features. "Infrastructure sits at the epicenter of multiple structural tailwinds, which we expect will drive its growth and provide additional capacity for financing," Goldman added.
Goldman detailed recent growth in the private infrastructure market, estimating an annualized expansion of roughly 11.5% from 2021 to 2024. The firm expects that growth rate to accelerate, potentially moving closer to the roughly 16% to 17% annualized pace it said prevailed for much of 2012 to 2021. At the higher growth rates, Goldman said infrastructure assets under management would be comfortably above $3 trillion by 2030.
The note also included the market performance of the major hyperscalers, showing recent percentage declines in their shares: Microsoft down 4.17%, Alphabet down 3.86%, Amazon down 1.81% and Meta down 0.47%.
Analysis
Goldman’s revised capex forecast and its outlook for capital sources signal an expectation that the data-center buildout tied to AI will require a broader set of financing mechanisms than historically used. The brokerage’s observations underline how project components - from land and buildings to power and specialized equipment - can draw investment interest from both infrastructure and real estate pools.