Bruce Flatt: Rate hikes don’t matter in long-term investing, but you have to be prepared

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  September 17, 2026 at 18:12  |  9:23  |  CNBC
Speakers
Bruce Flatt — CEO, Brookfield Asset Management
Leslie Picker — Chief Correspondent, CNBC

Summary

Bruce Flatt, Brookfield CEO, discusses the Fed's latest rate hike and argues short-term rate moves do not matter for long-duration real-asset investors. He highlights nuclear power, Westinghouse, power bottlenecks for AI data centers, and the emergence of chips as financeable assets. Flatt also says private credit will play a major role in funding the AI infrastructure buildout.

  • Bruce Flatt says the Fed's 25bps hike is immaterial for long-duration real-asset investing.
  • Brookfield's real-return assets and fixed-rate debt are framed as inflation-resilient with pricing power.
  • Flatt sees nuclear power in a 25-30 year comeback and calls Westinghouse the heart of the industry.
  • Power supply is described as the biggest bottleneck for AI data centers and factories globally.
  • Data-center and AI-factory capacity cannot be built fast enough, with global expansion still ahead.
  • Flatt says AI chips are becoming financeable assets and NVIDIA is leading that industry.
  • Private credit and capital formation are expected to fund the large-scale AI infrastructure buildout.
  • Brookfield is seeing concrete deals under the $500 billion AI infrastructure financing initiative.
Ideas
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 2:08
Brookfield's real assets and AI exposure.
Brookfield's portfolio is positioned around fixed-rate, real-return assets with pricing power, a 51% stake in Westinghouse, power and data-center infrastructure, and private credit. That mix gives it company-specific leverage to inflation, the nuclear comeback, and the AI infrastructure buildout while maintaining conservative financing.
BEP MED
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 2:14
Real return assets benefit from inflation.
Many of Brookfield's businesses are real-return assets with significant pricing power. Because much of the debt is fixed-rate and inflation drives revenues higher, rising rates and inflation are less damaging; inflation can be a positive factor for revenue streams as prices rise faster than interest costs.
Real return assets MED
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 3:46
Westinghouse dominates nuclear technology buildout.
Brookfield owns 51% of Westinghouse, which supplies fuel and engineering services to 60% of the global nuclear fleet. It has 14 plants in construction, another 40 coming soon and 100 after, and its technology is in all its reactors plus many others, making it the heart and a dominant technology of the nuclear industry. It has filed confidentially to go public.
Westinghouse Electric HIGH
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 4:14
Nuclear power in 25-30 year comeback.
Nuclear power is a 25-30 year comeback story because it is baseload, clean, and dispatchable, and is important to the U.S. and many other countries. The power buildout is led by all types of power, but nuclear is critical and is not stopping.
URA HIGH
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 5:12
Power supply is critical AI bottleneck.
Power demand is rising due to electrification, digitalization, and now AI factories. Supply is constrained in almost every grid globally; it takes years to bring nuclear, gas, solar, or wind online, and the biggest impediment to data centers and AI factories is power. Brookfield is having trouble keeping up with the amount of power it can build.
Power infrastructure HIGH
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 5:39
Data-center capacity cannot keep up.
Data-center and AI-factory capacity cannot be built fast enough to meet demand. Power is the largest bottleneck, and AI factories have not even expanded to the rest of the world yet, which is expected over the next ten years; any slowdown would only help the industry catch up.
DTCR HIGH
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 8:20
NVIDIA leads financeable AI chip shift.
NVIDIA is leading an industry where chips are shifting from a consumable to an investment asset class that can be financed. The chip industry is large but still in its infancy and will need capital structures and large-scale capital formation, similar to real estate, power plants, and infrastructure.
AI Chips NVDA MED
Bruce Flatt CEO, Brookfield Asset Management 8:59
Private credit funds AI infrastructure buildout.
The AI chip and data-center buildout will require large-scale capital formation, and private credit has the large sums of capital that the industry previously did not need. Brookfield is seeing many concrete discussions, and financing chips as an asset class should follow the same capital-structure playbook used for real estate, power plants, and infrastructure.
BIZD MED
Up Next
4:19
Fmr. Treasury Secretary Lew: Bond buybacks won't fundamentally change the direction of the markets
CNBC · Sep 17
1:07:22
MacroVoices #550 Harley Bassman: In FED We Trust
Macro Voices · Sep 17
5:12
Palantir CEO: AI companies have to be nationalized to cap their liability
CNBC · Sep 17
1:54
OpenAI reports 6 new instances of 'concerning model behavior'
CNBC · Sep 17
38:57
How Real-Time AI Video Is Changing How Creators Work
a16z · Sep 17

This CNBC video, published September 17, 2026, features Bruce Flatt discussing BEP, Real return assets, Westinghouse Electric, URA, Power infrastructure, DTCR, AI Chips, NVDA, BIZD. 8 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Bruce Flatt  · Tickers: BEP, Real return assets, Westinghouse Electric, URA, Power infrastructure, DTCR, AI Chips, NVDA, BIZD