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.

AI is reshaping credit markets in ways that demand a more thoughtful approach to investing. Public markets are being stretched by record financing needs, spreads leave little room for error, and traditional notions of diversification are being tested.

As public markets become more concentrated and real yields compress, private credit can deliver investment grade exposure and the potential for excess spread with fewer compromises.