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.
Akila Grewal, Matthew Michelini, Michael S Downing, Neil Mehta, Rebecca Tadikonda, Scott Kleinman, Sean Brennan, Shawn Wooden, Stephanie Drescher and Stephen Ulian
August 24, 2026
Apollo has delivered investment solutions across the retirement ecosystem for more than three decades. Together, Apollo and Athene are combining private markets with retirement income solutions designed to support long-term financial security for millions of retirees.