• BlackRock to look beyond pure AI investment

• AI-related energy and infrastructure favoured over big tech

• Client survey shows few view AI as a market bubble

LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, still believes in the investment case for artificial intelligence in the year ahead but will be focusing on broader opportunities, it said on Tuesday.

Investors seeking to play the AI theme into 2026 favour energy and infrastructure providers over Wall Street big tech, BlackRock said in its Investment Directions report, citing a recent investor survey it conducted.

AI and big tech dominated markets and world equity returns in 2025, but as the multitrillion-dollar race between the likes of Microsoft MSFT.O, Meta META.O and Alphabet GOOGL.O to build new data centres generates worries about uncertain returns on capital and higher borrowing, investors were looking for new ideas, the BlackRock survey showed.

Among the 732 companies in BlackRock's survey of clients based in the EMEA region, only a fifth said that the largest U.S. tech groups represented the most compelling investment opportunity in AI.

More than half said they backed providers of power needed by data centres and 37% put infrastructure as their top AI investment choice.

"It’s increasingly important to risk-manage megacap and AI exposure while also capturing differentiated upside opportunities," BlackRock's head of core U.S. equity, Ibrahim Kanan, said in a report accompanying the survey data.

Only 7% of respondents said they believed that the AI theme was a market bubble.