深度洞見 · 艾聆呈獻 In-depth Insights, Presented by AI Ling Advisory
This episode delves into the profound warning from Blackstone's President, Jonathan Gray, regarding the AI revolution. He posits that Wall Street is making a fundamental error: the market is fixated on the next tech bubble, yet severely underestimates the permanent value destruction AI is poised to inflict on mature industries.
Gray's core thesis is that the true peril is not a cyclical pullback in asset prices, but the complete obsolescence of entire business models—a new 'Industrial Revolution'. This episode deconstructs Blackstone's dual-track strategy to navigate this transformation: one, a rigorous defensive mandate, and two, a multi-billion dollar offensive designed to corner the market on AI infrastructure.
Key Takeaways
The 'Taxi Medallion' Risk: The greatest threat in the AI era is not a speculative tech bubble (like Pets.com in 2000), but a direct, overwhelming disruption to established industries (akin to Uber's impact on taxi medallions). This represents a permanent, irreversible annihilation of value, a risk the market is dangerously mispricing.
Blackstone's Defensive Mandate: Blackstone has enforced an internal directive requiring all investment memos to articulate AI risk on the "front page". This elevates technological threat assessment above financial modelling, making it a core gateway for any decision.
Avoiding 'Melting Ice Cubes': The firm is actively foregoing acquisitions of 'high AI-risk' enterprises (such as call centres and certain software firms), even if they currently possess stable cash flows. Blackstone views these assets as "melting ice cubes" on the verge of disruption.
The Offensive 'Picks and Shovels' Strategy: Blackstone is committing tens of billions of dollars to bet on the indispensable "picks and shovels" of the AI revolution: namely, data centres and electrical power. Regardless of which AI application ultimately wins, all will require this foundational infrastructure.
Monopolising the Bottlenecks: Blackstone is not just the world's largest provider of data centres (via QTS); it is vertically integrating by acquiring power generation plants (like Hill Top) and grid services firms (like Shermco). The strategy is to control AI development's greatest physical bottleneck: the power supply.