Between now and 2030, roughly $5 trillion will be spent building the infrastructure for AI. To justify that investment, businesses and individuals will need to spend $2 trillion a year on AI services.

Whether AI can earn back what's being spent on it is a defining question of this investment cycle, with impacts to be felt across debt and equity markets. Rob Bittencourt, who leads Apollo Thematic Investing, has spent his career tracking exactly these kinds of non-linear shifts. 

In this conversation, Rob breaks down the state of AI adoption and what enterprise ROI pressure means for the cycle and investor portfolios. He also discusses two other themes his team is tracking: US reindustrialization and why private capital may be better positioned than public markets to finance it, and the forces that are beginning to reshape finance itself.

For more analysis, check out these links:

• The Balance Sheet Behind the AI Revolution
• The AI Questions That Matter Most
• 2026 Midyear Credit Outlook: Adoption, Financing and Investing in the Age of AI