Jon Gray: So AI is obviously hugely important for our business, for the global economy. I would just frame this by saying, we set up our data science business back in 2015. We’ve got more than 50 people on that team today. We have focused historically on predictive AI, which is basically numbers in, numbers out. So you could look at a company and you could look at their pricing history and you could do much more sophisticated revenue management than human beings could do, similarly in terms of staffing. And we’ve been using that as a tool for investing for quite some time now and we’ll continue to do this. And we’ve been pushing it out to some of our portfolio companies. I would point out also that Steve personally with his investments at MIT and Oxford has been a leader thinking about AI.
And that has, I think, pushed the firm to try to do more in this space because we had more recognition something profound was happening here. I would say on the generative AI front, it’s still very early days in terms of applications. The ability to take language and put that into the machine, produce language or videos, I think it will have a powerful impact, but that’s going to take a bit of time. And what I think it will do most is impact customer engagement for many of our companies. I think it will also, on the content side, help in software development and media development. And we’re working by hiring data scientists working with our teams, we hired a senior executive recently. But I’d still say on the generative side, it’s early days.
Now on the investing overall, what we’ve tried to do is focus on the infrastructure around AI and that is primarily data centers. And by going out there and investing in $50 billion of data centers that we own or have under construction and another $50 billion in development pipeline globally, which Steve talked about that really is the infrastructure. We’re also spending a lot of time on power, which is a key necessity to build these data centers. And then we’ve made a number of investments around cloud companies, contractors building these, the whole ecosystem. So as a firm, we’re trying to spend a lot of time. It’s early days for us. The biggest impact has been around the infrastructure. But we’re working hard to find ways to help our companies be more competitive, and we’re certainly trying to make our investment process better.
So an area definitely worth focusing on.
Operator: We’ll go next to Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research.
Patrick Davitt: So there’s been increasing regulatory focus on the more illiquid stuff, the ABS that you and others are originating for insurance balance sheets and to what extent those should have a higher risk weighting. I know insurance regulators work very slow. But what are you hearing from your 18 big insurance clients on that issue and are you seeing this concern factor into new business conversations with that channel at all?
Jon Gray: So I think there’s a lot of discussion around these areas. A lot of the focus has been around securitizations or synthetic securitizations, creating different ratings than a direct rating. A lot of the activities, though, that we’ve been talking about here have been literally doing private assets investment grade, and very similar to what insurance companies have been doing in commercial mortgages and private placement debt for decades. What we’re really doing is taking that model of senior, what we believe safe debt on average A rated in infrastructure, in all forms of asset based finance, in residential finance and putting that directly on insurance company balance sheets. And I think regulators and participants see that as generally a good thing because it’s generating higher returns.
There’s a little less liquidity. Although I would point out when you look at things like ABS bonds, there’s not a lot of liquidity as it is, but there is a little less liquidity. But the risk profile of the assets is very much in line, if not safer, than what our clients have done historically. So I think there’s going to be more scrutiny. As you know, in the insurance space, we made a conscious choice. We’re not an insurance company. We really see ourselves more like BlackRock or PIMCO, what they do for liquid assets for insurance companies, we’re doing a similar dynamic for insurance companies and private assets. And we think what we’re doing is very sound, it saves, it generates, on average, 200 basis points of higher return than comparably rated liquid assets.
We think this is a good thing for policyholders. So we think there will be a lot of dialog with regulators, but the activities we’re focused on, we think will be well received over time.
Operator: With no additional question in the queue, I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Tucker for any additional or closing comments.
Weston Tucker: Thanks, everyone, for joining us today and look forward to following up after the call.
