It only takes Open AI to flub it to crater the medium term market I think.

That is a risk for venture capital and software lenders, but it misdiagnoses how Brookfield structures these transactions.

Brookfield isn't lending to OpenAI or financing speculative software. They are building physical infrastructure-power grids, land, and cooling systems backed by 10-to-20-year contracts with investment-grade tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

Even if OpenAI stumbles, those hyperscalers still require massive compute capacity for enterprise cloud (hosting LLM models, agents doing seriously productive work, traditional server hosting and more) and their long-term lease commitments remain legally binding.

Furthermore, Brookfield finances these projects through asset-level, non-recourse SPVs. If an individual data center project were to fail, the liability is strictly ring-fenced to that specific vehicle. It cannot contaminate BN's broader balance sheet or capital base.

LLM models will come and go and that doesn't matter. Much worse, some firms won't make money and will be bought out by more well-funded competitors, or part-acquired by partners relying on the model. Yet that also doesn't hit Brookfield at all, because the physical infrastructure having locked-in cash flows is what Brookfield cares about - and contractually enforces.

The demand for compute 20 years from now will be astronomically higher than supply today. The demand for power and permitted land with grid interconnections 20 years from now will be astronomically higher, making these physical bottlenecks highly resilient assets, even though the servers inside them evolve so the data centres will need some upgraded (at a far lower rate than the chips, which aren't part of the leaseouts by Brookfield). (*)

The internet infrastructure buildouts around the year 2000 leave some dubious memories. That buildout involved temporarily unused infrastructure where the buildout funding (and the associated excitement from investment bankers) took on a life of its own, building for the sake of building. Even then, demand eventually grew to fill the excess supply.

This time, by contrast, the building is driven more by desperation; both the immediate demand - and more imporatnyl the near-certain demand 10 and 20 years from now - is truly massively larger than present supply. There will be very real productivity gains, which is the most important idea that the headlines viewing the buildout as economically dubious, is in my view missing.

There will be changes of mood to the negavie in the market, new headline AI fears, but BN's underlying compounding engine is structurally intact here.

It's also an good entry point for BN right now - check back in 5 years for BN's CAGR from today (August 25 2026) to August 25 2031. A CAGR above 20% wouldn't surprise me as their quote gains have been lagging distributable earnings growth for a few years.

Last 5 years distributable earnings per share grew 18%, verus BN's quote growing only 8% over the same 5 years. The price will need to catch up at some point, whilst being boosted by the ongoing DE per share growth on top of that.

The have rarely hit their reported Plan Value but it is decent metric to look at relative values. They usually trade around 0.7x Plan Value and trading below that at 0.52x now. Historically a good time to increase holdings.

Date        Split-Adj PV   Split-Adj Price   Price-to-PV   Verified Source
2017-12-31  $19.07         $15.65            0.82x         Annual Report / Supplemental Info
2018-12-31  $22.12         $13.78            0.62x         Annual Report / Supplemental Info
2019-12-31  $25.66         $20.77            0.81x         Annual Report / Supplemental Info
2020-12-31  $29.77         $22.24            0.75x         Annual Report / Supplemental Info
2021-12-31  $34.52         $32.34            0.94x         Annual Report / Supplemental Info
2022-12-31  $49.54         $21.00            0.42x         Investor Day / Supplemental Info
2023-12-31  $57.47         $26.67            0.46x         Annual Report / Supplemental Info
2024-12-31  $66.67         $36.67            0.55x         Q4 2024 Shareholder Letter
2025-12-31  $77.33         $44.50            0.58x         Extrapolated (~16% historical CAGR)
2026-03-31  $80.43         $41.75            0.52x         Extrapolated (Q1 2026 Year-to-date)

- Manlobbi

(*) Brookfield typically provides "powered shells" or fully fitted data centers. They supply the space, the power, and the cooling. The tenant (Microsoft, AWS, Google) buys, installs, and owns the actual servers and chips.