Goldman's Massive AI Capex Spend Proves the Tech Arms Race is Accelerating

Goldman Sachs Asset Management is betting heavily on AI infrastructure — semiconductors and cybersecurity — signaling the next major wirehouse competitive battle will be fought over tech stacks, not just payout grids.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management is telling clients to buy the "picks and shovels" of artificial intelligence, and the conviction behind that call reveals something important about where the wealth management industry is heading — and how far behind most wirehouses actually are.

GSAM's Brook Dane, co-head of public tech investing, made the case Wednesday on Bloomberg Television that demand for AI infrastructure remains intact despite geopolitical uncertainty from the Iran conflict, according to FA Magazine. "Yes, the world is more uncertain today than it was four months ago. And risk premia have probably moved higher, structurally, because of that," Dane said. "It doesn't change the direction and magnitude of what we are seeing."

Dane's thesis is straightforward: compute capacity is the most constrained resource in the market right now, and the major technology companies are not slowing their AI buildouts regardless of macro conditions. "Our baseline forecasts, when we do our bottoms-up work, continue to point to acceleration in capex spending and it being durable for much longer," he said. "We are not late cycle. We are early cycle to mid-cycle."

Semiconductor firms stand to benefit most directly. Dane called out Marvell Technology as an under-appreciated name in the industry, citing its ties to Amazon and other major vendors and its ability to expand product attachments. Cybersecurity companies are another area of significant opportunity, as advances in AI drive the need for greater digital protections.

Source: Bloomberg Television, FA Magazine

For wirehouse advisors, the Goldman call carries weight precisely because GSAM is not a disinterested observer. They are managing money in this space. When their co-head of public tech investing says the cycle is early-to-mid stage, they are telling their own clients to stay in — or get in. The question for financial advisors is how that thesis translates into portfolio construction for clients who are increasingly nervous about AI valuations.

The answer from Goldman is: stop looking at AI as a theme and start looking at it as infrastructure. Compute is the new electricity. The firms building the wires and power plants — semiconductors, data centers, networking — are the durable plays. The application layer is noisier, more volatile, and more prone to disruption. Infrastructure is not. That framing, coming from a firm with Goldman's distribution reach and $3 trillion in AUM, will shape how wirehouse advisors pitch technology exposure for the rest of 2026.