Markets | Leadership] FII - the Board of Changemakers Summary: Geo-Economics 2025: AI Power, Tokenized Finance, and the New Capital Map

Hi All,

Happy Halloween! It is that time of the year! The 9th Future Investment Initiative took place this week in Saudi Arabia. It is one of my favorite roundtables as I get to hear from the world leaders on the future of finance and the world outside the World Economic Forum, and the like.

Speakers

• Bill Ackman — Founder & CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management
• Cristiano R. Amon — President & CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
• Jamie Dimon — Chairman & CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
• Georges Elhedery — CEO, HSBC Holdings plc
• Laurence D. Fink — Chairman & CEO, BlackRock, Inc.
• Dr. Patrice Motsepe — Founder & Executive Chairman, African Rainbow Minerals
• Scott Nuttall — Co-CEO, KKR & Co.
• Lubna S. Olayan — Chair of the Corporate Board, The Olayan Group; Chair, Saudi Awwal Bank (SAB)
• Stephen A. Schwarzman — Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, The Blackstone Group
• David Solomon — Chairman & CEO, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
• Lip-Bu Tan — CEO, Intel Corporation

Moderator

• David M. Rubenstein — Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, The Carlyle Group

🧭 Executive Summary

Nations are now wielding trade routes, supply chains, and capital flows as their chief instruments of geopolitical influence—redrawing alliances more profoundly than traditional diplomacy. Beneath the IMF’s projected 2.8% global GDP growth for 2025 lies a fragmented landscape: trade between rival blocs is contracting even as intra-regional commerce and investment deepen.

At the Board of Changemakers: Geo-Economics panel, global financial leaders—Larry Fink, Jamie Dimon, David Solomon, Steve Schwarzman, Scott Nuttall, Cristiano Amon, and others—outlined how this new order is being engineered through markets:

1. AI and Data Infrastructure: Amon, Schwarzman, and Solomon underscored that the AI revolution is fueling an unprecedented build-out of data centers and power systems—making electricity the new bottleneck of global growth.
2. Tokenization and Financial Plumbing: Fink predicted every financial asset will become digital within the decade, reshaping the architecture of money movement and regulatory control.
3. Private Capital and Growth Policy: Dimon, Nuttall, and Solomon stressed that sustainable prosperity (e.g. US getting out of debt) depends on unlocking private capital, pragmatic regulation, and pro-growth policy—not austerity.
4. Regional Power Shifts: Olayan and Fink highlighted the GCC’s emergence as a new global capital hub, while Motsepe pointed to Africa’s long-ignored potential amid renewed commodity and infrastructure investment.
5. Industrial Sovereignty: Intel’s Tan and HSBC’s Quinn described how semiconductors, code, and cloud capacity have become “national assets,” embedding geopolitics inside corporate strategy.

The collective message: the next era of globalization will be multipolar, digitized, and infrastructure-driven. As technology, finance, and energy intertwine, markets—not ministries—are defining the balance of power.

My questions for you for reflection: Will shared economic interests—AI infrastructure, tokenized capital, renewable grids—forge a new basis for cooperation, or will financial interdependence harden into a permanently divided world economy? What do you think? I would love to hear from you!

💬Deep dive: Larry Fink (Chairman & CEO, BlackRock)

Theme: Capital Flows, Digitization, and Global Growth Policy

1️⃣ Surging Investor Demand in the Gulf

• BlackRock recently participated in a Saudi pipeline transaction (Jafurah) that drew 5x more investor demand than supply.
• This reflects a paradigm shift in global capital allocation:
  • The GCC (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar) is emerging as one of the top destinations for institutional capital.
  • Historically “underinvested,” the region now combines reform momentum, infrastructure pipelines, and sovereign partnership models attractive to long-term allocators.

Bottom line: Global investors are overweighting the U.S. but increasingly rotating marginal dollars into the Middle East as a credible third pole alongside America and Asia. Expect GCC assets to move from peripheral to core institutional portfolios by 2030.

2️⃣ Capital Rotation: Dollar Dominance and Rebalancing

• Early 2025 saw modest rotation out of the U.S. dollar into Europe and emerging markets — largely a rebalancing from extreme U.S. overweights.
• Over the past two months (as of the panel), capital has flowed back into the U.S., reflecting strong growth and tech-driven capex.
• Key reason:
  • In Q2, over 40% of U.S. GDP growth came from capital expenditure in technology (data centers, AI infrastructure, energy systems).
  • This level of tech investment differentiates the U.S. from Europe and underpins the widening GDP gap.

Bottom line: The U.S. retains structural dominance due to technology-led reinvestment cycles, while Europe lags in digital and energy infrastructure.

3️⃣ Tokenization: The Next Financial Revolution

• Fink warned that markets are underestimating tokenization, calling it “the most significant shift in financial plumbing since the Internet.”
• Core message:
  • Every financial asset—ETFs, bonds, private credit, real estate—will eventually be tokenized.
  • This will enable instant settlement, lower costs, and democratized access through digital wallets.
• Central banks now face existential questions:
  • How fast should they digitize sovereign currencies?
  • What happens to bank payments, Visa, Mastercard, and intermediaries?
• Most governments are “ill-prepared” for this wave.

Bottom line: Tokenization will collapse today’s post-trade stack and redefine asset management infrastructure.
Custody, fund accounting, and transfer agency models will need full modernization.

4️⃣ Fiscal Reality & Growth Imperative

• On U.S. debt (≈$38 trillion, growing by $2T/yr):
  • The problem is manageable if the U.S. can sustain 3% real GDP growth.
  • The solution is unlocking private capital, not higher taxes.
  • “Trillions of dollars sit idle in savings and money-market accounts. If that moves into investment, we’ll be fine.”
• The key is growth policy, not austerity.

Bottom line: Fink reframes the debt debate around velocity of private capital—mobilizing excess liquidity into productive assets rather than consumption or cash holdings.

5️⃣ Global Dependence on Dollar-Based Assets

• The U.S. still relies on foreign investors buying 30–35% of all Treasuries.
• If that demand wanes, it could cause a multiplier effect of stress—since few countries with high debt-to-GDP rely so heavily on external financing.
• Hence, preserving global confidence in the U.S. dollar and Treasury market is paramount.

Bottom line: U.S. fiscal sustainability depends less on internal debt ratios than on maintaining foreign trust in the dollar’s primacy.

6️⃣ Policy as a Competitive Advantage

• Good policy is “free growth.”
  • Education, health care, infrastructure, FDI openness, and smart taxation drive productivity without fiscal cost.
  • Bad policy—regulation, protectionism, consumption-heavy spending—destroys compounding.
• Praised Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 reforms and the U.S.’s tech innovation as examples of policy-driven capital attraction.

7️⃣ Macro Investment View

• Remain overweight the U.S. for at least the next 18 months, due to:
  • Structural tech leadership.
  • Corporate reinvestment in AI and clean energy.
  • Deep, liquid capital markets.
• Watch the digitization of financial systems as the next frontier investment theme.

🧩 Synthesis for Financial Executives

In summary:

Larry Fink positioned tokenization, private capital mobilization, and growth-oriented policy as the three pillars of the next financial epoch.
His core conviction: “We can’t tax our way out of debt—we must innovate and invest our way out.”

💬Roundtable Summary

1️⃣ Market & Political Risk

Bill Ackman (Pershing Square)

• Advocates independence + free speech as business virtues.
• Warns that “socialist” city leadership could undermine New York’s competitiveness.
• Underscores how ideology influences capital retention and migration within U.S. cities.

Takeaway:
➡️ Municipal policy and ideology are becoming material investment factors — expect fund managers to price political governance into real-asset and urban-growth models.

2️⃣ Technology & AI Disruption

Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm)

• AI = “new form of computing”—will transform every device from phone to car to factory.
• Qualcomm repurposes mobile-era IP to serve AI-driven edge computing.
• Predicts 12-24 months of massive diffusion into consumer and industrial hardware.
• Highlights human-machine interface advances and agentic AI platforms.
• Notes partnership with Saudi Arabia’s National AI Company (Humane) as an early model.

Takeaway:
➡️ AI hardware cycle parallels the 1990s Internet boom; edge + agentic AI will generate new investable infrastructure categories (semiconductors, data centers, embedded systems).

3️⃣ Work Culture & Human Capital

Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan)

• New $3 bn Manhattan HQ reflects belief in in-person collaboration.
• “Apprenticeship and accidental collaboration” drive creativity; remote work erodes this.
• Re-establishing corporate cohesion is a productivity lever, not nostalgia.
• Acknowledges Pilates-and-wellness culture as part of employee retention.

Takeaway:
➡️ Expect continued divergence: top banks returning to full-office models, tech still hybrid. This affects commercial real estate recovery and urban service economies.

4️⃣ Cross-Border Banking & National Assets

Noel Quinn (HSBC)

• Defines “national assets” now as code, chips, cloud & data—each geopolitically sensitive.
• Stresses trust, historical presence, and cultural fluency as competitive moats.
• Sees “oceans of opportunity” in non-strategic supply chains that remain global.

Takeaway:
➡️ Global banks must localize around national-security frontiers while monetizing neutral corridors in trade, logistics, and services.

5️⃣ Capital Flows & Digitization

Larry Fink (BlackRock)

• Saudi/GCC now a major capital destination—fivefold oversubscription on recent pipeline deal.
• U.S. remains overweighted by global investors despite the outflows earlier this year; tech capex (40% of Q2 U.S. GDP growth) leads.
• Tokenization = next systemic shift: every financial asset will become digital.
• Predicts rapid rise of digital wallets for ETFs, bonds, and cross-border settlement.
• Warns most regulators are unprepared for tokenized markets.
• On U.S. debt: solvency manageable if growth > 3%; key is unlocking private capital, not higher taxes.

Takeaway:
➡️ Tokenization will redefine market plumbing—custody, liquidity, and regulation. Digital-asset readiness becomes a fiduciary duty for major asset managers.

6️⃣ Commodities & Emerging Markets

Patrice Motsepe (African Rainbow Minerals)

• Gold at record highs = “asset of fear” amid global instability.
• Central banks buying validates gold’s monetary hedge role.
• Africa = “most exciting” yet under-allocated (≈1 % of global PE capital).
• Success hinges on competitiveness, safety, and policy stability.

Takeaway:
➡️ Expect renewed PE focus on Africa’s resource and consumer economies as macro diversification plays—provided governance and FX risk improve.

7️⃣ Private Markets & Alternative Credit

Scott Nuttall (KKR)

“The next era of private markets belongs to investors who can compound through volatility—using patient balance sheets and public-private collaboration to build durable value.”

• Fundraising slowdown reflects cycle, not structural weakness.
• Over-deployment in 2021 → slower monetizations → temporary liquidity drag.
• Infrastructure, private credit, and real estate remain strong.
• Dispersion rising: “We’re entering a real-skill cycle.”

Takeaway:
➡️ PE alpha shifting from multiple expansion (i.e. financial engineering and multiple arbitrage) to cycle-through investing (i.e. real ownership) and balance-sheet partnerships with governments. The most competitive firms will integrate infrastructure, credit, and equity platforms to finance the physical and digital build-out of the new global economy.

Nuttall reframed current fundraising challenges in private equity as cyclical, not structural. The apparent slowdown in capital deployment reflects digestion from the post-pandemic boom rather than a fundamental decline in private-market opportunity.

Core Points:

• The 2021 surge in dealmaking and fundraising led to temporary over-deployment at peak valuations. As a result, monetizations are taking longer, creating a short-term liquidity drag for LPs awaiting distributions.
• This lull is transitional—a classic mid-cycle recalibration after a decade of low rates and multiple expansion.
• In contrast, infrastructure, private credit, and real assets continue to see robust inflows, supported by government partnership models, fiscal stimulus, and the global need for hard-asset resilience.
• The easy years of synchronized multiple growth are over. Returns will now depend on manager skill, active governance, and operational alpha.
• “We’re entering a real-skill cycle”—one where disciplined underwriting and value creation separate top performers from asset gatherers.

Investor Implications:

• Prioritize managers with multi-asset platforms (credit + infra + equity) capable of compounding through rate cycles.
• Partner with sovereigns and development funds on infrastructure and transition-energy vehicles—sources of long-duration, policy-aligned growth.
• Expect dispersion to widen: manager selection, liquidity discipline, and vintage diversification are now the primary drivers of performance.

8️⃣ Saudi Arabia’s Transformation

Princess Lubna Olayan (Olayan Group)

• Foreign investment up 24%; $34 bn in inflows this year.
• New Investment Law = equal footing for foreign & domestic investors.
• Top sectors: real estate, data centers, healthcare, pharma, renewables.
• Visa and lifestyle reforms enhance ease of doing business.
• States women have long participated in business; visibility now greater.

Takeaway:
➡️ Saudi market liberalization = core pillar of Vision 2030.
Institutional investors can now pursue on-shore equity ownership and exit rights similar to developed markets.

9️⃣ Energy Transition & AI Infrastructure

Steve Schwarzman (Blackstone)

“Power is the new oil.” Schwarzman warned that the next major economic bottleneck is not capital—but power.

Electricity—its generation, distribution, and reliability—has become the critical input for both economic growth and national competitiveness. AI, quantum computing, and digital trade will increasingly be constrained not by chips or talent, but by available megawatts.

• Forecasts U.S. power shortage crisis due to AI-driven data-center load.
• Grid grew little for 20 years; demand +4–5 % annually → capacity crunch imminent: After two decades of stagnation in U.S. grid expansion, demand is now surging 4–5% annually, driven by the exponential energy requirements of AI data centers, electrified transport, and industrial re-shoring.
• Blackstone = world’s largest data-center owner; expects very high IRRs from power-infrastructure builds.

Takeaway:
➡️ “Power is the new oil.” Data-center + generation + transmission = next decade’s dominant private-market theme.

Core Points:

• The U.S. electric grid hasn’t meaningfully expanded for nearly 20 years, yet AI and cloud infrastructure are consuming unprecedented levels of energy.
• Reserve margins (~15%) are being eroded, creating the conditions for localized power shortages and higher electricity prices.
• Blackstone, already the world’s largest owner and developer of data centers, sees this mismatch as a multi-decade investment opportunity.
• The firm expects exceptionally high IRRs from projects that combine generation, transmission, and storage, effectively positioning energy infrastructure as the backbone of the digital economy.

Takeaway:
➡️ The convergence of AI infrastructure, grid modernization, and energy transition defines the next decade’s dominant private-market investment theme. Funds that can bridge digital capacity and physical energy systems—from renewables and battery storage to nuclear microgrids—will shape the frontier of institutional capital deployment.

🔟 Public Markets & M&A Reopening

David Solomon (Goldman Sachs)

• M&A and IPO activity accelerating after regulatory thaw.
• CEOs shifting from “Can we?” = No → “Can we?” = Maybe/Yes.
• Scale M&A favored; regulatory clarity drives deal momentum.
• U.S. dominates (≈70 % of global M&A participants).
• No near-term U.S. recession signals; risk remains from unforeseen exogenous shocks.

Takeaway:
➡️ Strategic consolidation is back; banks’ advisory pipelines robust through 2026–27.
Europe lags due to regulation and slower capital markets.

1️⃣1️⃣ Industrial Policy & Semiconductors

Lip Boon Tan (Intel)

• Addressed conflict-of-interest claims; placed carry interests in trust.
• U.S. government now owns 10 % of Intel — mirrors TSMC’s national-security model.
• Refocusing Intel on engineering excellence, AI & foundry independence.
• Predicts U.S. will re-emerge as reliable global semiconductor hub.

Takeaway:
➡️ Industrial policy + public-private equity stakes signal a new strategic-capital era blending national resilience with shareholder value.

1️⃣2️⃣ Fiscal Balance & Growth Policy

Group Discussion

• U.S. debt ≈ $38 T, +$2 T per year: sustainable only with faster growth.
• Focus on assets, not liabilities: taxation power, equity stakes, innovation.
• Growth > 3 % and private-capital mobilization = path to stability.
• Dollar remains structurally dominant despite 2025 softness.
• Deregulation and “good policy” (education, infrastructure, FDI) = zero-cost growth drivers.

Takeaway:
➡️ Debt anxiety is secondary to productivity. Unlocking private capital and pro-growth policy outweigh fiscal austerity.

1️⃣3️⃣ Crypto & Store-of-Value Debate

• Larry Fink: Crypto & gold = “assets of fear,” hedges against currency debasement.
• Jamie Dimon: Blockchain = real; speculative crypto tokens = not core finance.
• JPM Coin and smart-contract rails demonstrate practical adoption.

Takeaway:
➡️ Institutionalization of blockchain continues—expect convergence between tokenized finance and regulated bank infrastructure.

🪙 Core Macro Signals for 2025-2027

🧩 Closing Consensus

1. Growth > Austerity: Nations must grow out of debt via private-capital mobilization.
2. Technology = Geopolitics: Chips, code, and data are the new national assets.
3. Power & Infrastructure: Electrification and AI capacity drive next-decade returns.
4. Tokenization Wave: Financial plumbing is being rebuilt faster than policymakers realize.
5. Saudi & GCC = New Capital Hubs: Policy clarity and reform turning the region into a top-tier global allocator destination.

In short:

The panel signaled a tectonic pivot from defensive de-risking to strategic re-industrialization.
Growth, energy, and digital infrastructure—not austerity—will define the coming decade of geo-economics.

Note) The summary has been put together with the help of AI and reviewed by a human being, me.