Brookfield Asset Management CEO Conor Teskey told CNBC on Thursday that the company wants to build a data center in London’s Canary Wharf, a financial district known as “Britain’s Wall Street.”
Teskey told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in Canary Wharf that AI infrastructure and the underlying energy requirements needed to support it are now “the biggest themes at Brookfield today.”
The company, which invests in real estate, infrastructure, renewable energy and private markets, has a portfolio of multi-gigawatt data centers around the world and a growing pipeline of sites under construction and development.
It also jointly owns and manages Canary Wharf with Qatar Investment Authority through its Canary Wharf Group real estate company.
“We think there is a big opportunity for AI in the UK and Europe because they are halfway between the US and China. The UK doesn’t have a homegrown hyperscaler, so building AI infrastructure and improving productivity with AI will be a different dynamic here. It will probably be driven more by the government than by the hyperscalers.”
Brookfield launched a dedicated AI infrastructure fund backed by Nvidia last November and also agreed dedicated AI partnerships with the governments of France and Sweden.
Teskey also dismissed concerns about an AI data center bubble.
“We think we have more work to do if we are going to build data centers on long-term contracts with some of the best trading partners in the world. We’re going to put data centers here in Canary Wharf. They’re going to put them everywhere.”
He said three major trends are currently dominating the investment landscape: rapidly increasing energy demand, increasing digitalization and rewiring global supply chains, creating a “huge demand” for capital.
“With the combination of energy growth (and) the productivity benefits of AI on a global scale, we are looking at productivity gains that make investment incredibly attractive,” Teskey added.
Teskey acknowledged that there are some bubbles in the current market, adding that the current environment calls for greater investment discipline.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t get excited about these big trends,” he says.
