According to strategists at Goldman Sachs Group, stocks of companies with substantial physical production assets are demonstrating superior performance as investors seek safe havens to avoid the risks of industry disruption posed by artificial intelligence.

The Goldman Sachs team noted that since the beginning of 2025, a portfolio of heavy-asset or capital-intensive stocks they constructed—whose economic value stems from physical assets—has achieved approximately 35% in excess returns compared to a portfolio of light-asset companies that rely more on human or digital capital.

Strategists, including Guillaume Jaisson, stated in a client report that investors are increasingly purchasing stocks exhibiting the so-called "HALO effect" (Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence risk), with a focus concentrated on sectors such as utilities, basic resources, and energy.

The European capital-intensive stocks selected by the team include ASML, Safran, LVMH, Air Liquide, and Airbus. The light-asset portfolio, for comparison, includes L'Oréal, Adyen, DSV, and Siemens Healthineers.

Jaisson wrote, "The market is rewarding capacity, networks, infrastructure, and engineering complexity—assets that are costly to replicate and less susceptible to obsolescence from technological iteration."

Fears that AI applications will disrupt existing business models have swept through multiple industries, from software to asset management, causing significant declines in stocks previously considered "safe bets." This anxiety has triggered indiscriminate selling, even spilling over into sectors like logistics, which appear less immediately threatened by AI.

The strategists added that the race for AI leadership is also transforming previously light-asset leading stocks, specifically the major cloud service providers, into capital-intensive enterprises.

They estimate that companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Oracle will invest approximately $1.5 trillion between 2023 and 2026 to build AI infrastructure. Prior to 2022, the total historical investment by these companies was only about $600 billion.

The Goldman Sachs team indicated that rising real yields, alongside geopolitical factors driving fiscal expenditure and manufacturing expansion, are supporting a shift of capital towards capital-intensive sectors. Earnings momentum has also begun to favor such companies: consensus market expectations now show that heavy-asset firms have higher earnings per share growth and return on equity than their light-asset counterparts.

Strategists at Morgan Stanley also observed that capital is moving away from light-asset industries like software. In a report on Monday, they noted that European long-only funds had begun reducing their holdings of stocks perceived as vulnerable to AI disruption by the end of 2025.