BNT | Brookfield Wealth Solutions Ltd. | earnings call 2026-09-14
Verbatim transcript (source: faster-whisper-small.en)

Welcome back to Closing Bell Overtime. We have this big breaking news this afternoon about what's been happening when it comes to the AI infrastructure bill. This is news that was first out a little earlier today, but we can confirm that news at this point. Invidia working with some of the biggest names on Wall Street to secure financing for its customers. Joining right now with us to talk about all of this is Jensen Wong. He of course is Invidia's founder and CEO. David Solomon is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Larry Fink is BlackRock CEO. John Gray is Blackstone's president. Vladimir Zlazak is global head of digital infrastructure at KKR. Jim Zeltar is Apollo's president and Bruce Flatt is Brookfield's CEO. And gentlemen, welcome to all of you today. It's kind of amazing to get this group around the table and Larry to have you joining us remotely too. But we have to start with this news. Jensen, this is a big deal and it's a big number. Half a trillion dollars more than that in terms of financing. We know this is an expensive bill, but tell us a little bit about how this came together and what exactly it is. Well, first of all, I wanna thank all of my partners for joining me here today. I think this is the first time this has ever happened before and I can't imagine a more important time to do it. We're announcing six partnerships today. These partnerships are gonna pull together independent long-term capital to fund and support AI infrastructure build out. This is an extraordinary time as you know, because this is the first time in some 60 years that the computing industry is going through a fundamental platform shift from the way that software was done before to the way that it's gonna be done in the future called artificial intelligence. Fundamentally, what's different about this industry and this way of doing computing is that the computer is now part of the infrastructure like electricity, like the internet. And so you have to think about it like it's infrastructure and build it out accordingly. Every company will be powered by it. Every country will build it. And so we're talking about an extraordinarily significant infrastructure build. With a very hefty price tag. It's a hefty price tag. Each gigawatt is something like 50, $60 billion. And so there's energy involved, there's land power and shell involved and of course there's the computing part of it. This is of course also a milestone for our company. We used to build chips that we sell and these are technology components that people buy and use. But now NVIDIA's AI factory platform is really an investable asset, an infrastructure asset. And the reason for that is because it's productive as revenue generating. It is fungible, it's used by just about every cloud service provider. It runs every AI model. It runs algorithms of all different types. And so it has really broad, deep reach and off takers. This is a really great opportunity for us to build out the infrastructure, take advantage of an asset that is investable, long life and productive. And with the partnerships that we have here, we can support a really broad ecosystem build out. John, I'll say it's very unusual to have all of you in one place. Most of you compete on one level or another. A lot of times you work together on things too, but how did this come together? How did they all come to you? And David, I'll start with you on that. Well, I mean, Jensen approached us and we've got a deep belief and a lot of confidence in NVIDIA and what they're doing. We have a deep belief in the opportunity set that's ahead. We, like all the partners at the table, have been spending a lot of time raising capital and thinking about the capital that's necessary and how we create the best access to that capital for people that need it to move things forward. I think one of the things Goldman Sachs brings to the table is we have an extraordinary distribution network. So we obviously would bring capital, but we also bring a very, very unique distribution network. But Jensen came, approached us with the idea, and we said, we'd love to talk to you about it. We have a deep belief in the direction of travel and the opportunity set over the course of the next three, five, seven, 10 years. And as Jensen highlighted, it's a big infrastructure build and the capital markets are signaling that there's lots of capital available to support it. And we're trying to find all the different ways that we as an organization, in partnership with other great firms that are doing similar things, can participate in getting the capital to the right places to extend this or accelerate this infrastructure build. I described it before as if I buy a GM car, I might get financing from GM. This is you kind of bringing other people from the outside to say, these will be the partners that do this financing. You know, this really, really quite- And by the way, it's not NVIDIA's money that's coming up on this. That's right. This is all third party, independent, long-term capital that all of my partners are gonna go help us pull together. Now, this is really quite an extraordinary, this is a face shift in the way that people think about computing. It used to be, you know, technology, now it's infrastructure. And I would say- Go ahead, go ahead, Jim. This is really what David has explained. This is calling all precincts. This is American exceptionalism, what NVIDIA has created over the last 33 years, coming together right now. But this is calling all precincts because really now compute is an asset class. And when we think about the last hundred years, the last century of water and power and utilities, you know, in 2026 and beyond the next decade, the US will lead this. It's a global imperative, but it's a US imperative. And as I said before, this is really all precincts coming together, not just one market of equity or debt or banks, but it's all, it needs any and all. American exceptionalism meaning that you are going to be building with an American company, NVIDIA and others, but this is financing that could go around the globe. No doubt, but the depth and breadth of the US global markets in aggregate is the envy of the world. NVIDIA is one of the envies of the world, what they've created. And what you're seeing here, this consortium of partners, and yes, we do compete, but we finance a tremendous amount together as well. And in the end of the day, this will benefit the US economy as a competitive tool for the advancement for the next decade. Larry, let me get you in because you're not here around the table today, but I'd like to get your perspective on this. Is this new money that's going to be spent? Have you already raised this money? Is this money that you were going to be deploying into AI anyway? And it's just kind of funneling it towards certain partners? Well, first of all, hi, everyone. Jensen, thank you. Thank you for the trust that you've given BlackRock. We have some capital now, but we're going to be raising quite a bit more capital. As Jensen said, each gigawatt costs 50 to $60 billion to build out. And we're talking about, in the United States alone, we're going to need over 70 gigawatts of power to fuel this. And then you add up everything else around the world. It's going to be an enormous financial opportunity. As Jim was talking about Americans exceptionalism, it has to flow through the American capital markets because this is the biggest source of capital. But the other angle that I think this is so important that we must also understand, there's quite a bit of negativity around.