BlackRock’s Larry Fink Predicts a New Asset Class: Computing Power Futures
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink dropped a bombshell at the Milken Institute Global Conference this week, predicting that the world is on the verge of an entirely new financial market — one built around computing power.
“A new asset class will be buying futures of compute,” Fink said during a panel discussion on Tuesday. “We just don’t have enough compute power right now.”
His comments underscore a reality that has quietly reshaped boardroom conversations from Silicon Valley to Wall Street: demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure is exploding, and supply is scrambling to catch up. Fink argued that before long, traders could be buying and selling futures tied to computing capacity, much like they do with oil, wheat, or natural gas.
The idea may sound futuristic, but the math behind it is brutally simple. Fink pointed to multiple bottlenecks — chip shortages, memory constraints, and power deficits — that are throttling the industry’s ability to scale. “We're short power, we're short compute, we're short chips,” he said, warning that the gap between demand and supply is widening faster than most anticipate.
Despite the frenzy, Fink pushed back on fears that AI is inflating a speculative bubble. “There is not an AI bubble,” he said flatly. “There is the opposite. We have supply shortages. Demand is growing much faster than anyone has ever anticipated.”
BlackRock is putting its money where its mouth is. Through partnerships with Microsoft, Nvidia, and UAE-based investment vehicle MGX, the firm is pouring tens of billions into data centers and energy infrastructure. A consortium led by BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners recently agreed to acquire Aligned Data Centers for roughly $40 billion, and is working with private equity firm EQT to buy power provider AES Corp. for $10.7 billion in cash.
The investment group aims to deploy $30 billion in equity capital to support the buildout of data centers and related systems. According to Moody’s Ratings, at least $3 trillion is expected to flow into data center-related investments over the next five years, covering servers, computing equipment, and power capacity. Six major U.S. hyperscalers — Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Oracle, Meta, and CoreWeave — are on track to spend $500 billion on data centers this year alone.
Fink isn’t alone in seeing the bigger picture. At the same panel, Brookfield Asset Management CEO Bruce Flatt said the global economy is being fundamentally reshaped around data centers, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. For Fink, the logical next step is a financial instrument that allows companies to hedge against the cost of compute — just as airlines hedge fuel or farmers hedge grain.
“A futures market for computing could allow firms to lock in pricing for the resources needed to run AI systems,” Fink said. While such a market doesn’t exist yet, the scale of demand — combined with persistent shortages — is already pushing investors to view computing power as a tradable asset in its own right.
For crypto investors, the concept isn’t entirely foreign. Blockchain networks already treat computation as a core input, with miners and validators effectively monetizing it. Extending that logic to AI infrastructure could create new pricing mechanisms and trading platforms, bringing traditional finance closer to models already seen in digital asset markets.
Industry Reactions
Sarah Chen, 42, Portfolio Manager at a New York-based hedge fund:
“This is a natural evolution. If you can trade electricity futures, why not compute? The demand is real, the scarcity is real, and the financial infrastructure will follow. It’s not a question of if, but when.”
Marcus Delgado, 29, AI Startup Founder in Austin, Texas:
“Honestly, it feels like Wall Street is trying to monetize a problem they helped create. We can’t get enough GPUs to train our models, and instead of fixing the supply chain, they want to create a futures market? That’s like selling tickets to a fire while the building burns. It’s cynical, and it’s going to squeeze small players even harder.”
Elena Rossi, 55, Energy Infrastructure Analyst at a European investment bank:
“Fink is right about the bottlenecks, but the real story here is the energy piece. You can’t have compute without power, and power infrastructure takes years to build. A futures market might help with price discovery, but it won’t build a single transformer. The physical constraints are the real story.”
This story was originally published by TheStreet on May 5, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.