By Fatima Gulzar
Publication Date: 2026-08-17 21:31:00
BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) CEO Larry Fink joined the CNBC panel this week and laid out the scale of what’s needed to power the AI boom. “We’re gonna need over 70 gigawatts of power,” he said, just for the US.
Why This Matters
Fink compared this moment to the birth of the mortgage-backed securities market in the 1970s, when he started his career, calling it the next chapter in financial engineering.
That comparison raises a real question: is this genuinely a new frontier for capital markets, or an uneasy echo of the last time Wall Street got excited about securitizing a fast-growing asset?
The Bull and Bear Case: NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Fink called the AI buildout a source of “a fantastic investment” that could draw growing capital allocation over time, positioning NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s hardware at the center of what he framed as a genuinely new asset class rather than a passing trend.
The entire plan depends on Nvidia’s GPUs holding their value over time rather than depreciating quickly, an assumption short seller Michael Burry has publicly challenged. So far, the companies involved have only signed memos of understanding, not binding contracts.
The Bull and Bear Case: BlackRock
Fink said BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) already has some…