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AI growth is just getting started, BlackRock’s thematic ETF head says

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AI Infrastructure Build-out

BlackRock expects infrastructure and cybersecurity plays to shine in 2025.

Jay Jacobs, the firm’s U.S. head of thematic and active ETFs, cites the artificial intelligence boom as a major catalyst.

“It’s still very early in the AI adoption cycle,” he told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.

According to Jacobs, AI companies need to build out their data centers. Plus, keeping that data safe is also a sound investment play for the new year.

“If you think about your data, you want to spend more on cybersecurity as it gets more valuable,” he said. “We think this is really going to benefit the cybersecurity [and the] software community which is seeing very rapid revenue growth based off of this AI.”

Jacobs also sees a wider impact in terms of the supporting infrastructure.

“I think what people forget is kind of, magical as technology is, there’s real physical things on the ground that run that technology, whether it’s power, whether it’s data centers and real estate, whether it’s chips. It’s not just something that lives in the ether, in the cloud, there’s real physical things that have to happen, and that means energy, that means more materials like copper, that means more real estate. You really have to think about kind of the physical infrastructure that underlies it,” he added.

So, for Jacobs, the theme is widening one’s investment scope.

“It’s not just about megacap tech names. There’s other semiconductor companies, there’s other data center companies, there’s other software companies that are benefiting from the rise of this theme,” he said.

Jacobs cited BlackRock’s iShares Future AI & Tech ETF (ARTY) and iShares AI Innovation and Tech Active ETF (BAI) as potential ways to benefit from the rise in AI. The iShares Future AI & Tech ETF is up around 13% for the year so far, while the iShares AI Innovation and Tech Active ETF is up around 13% since its Oct. 21 launch as of Friday’s close.

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Warner Bros. Discovery, Tesla, Robinhood, IonQ and more

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Robinhood shares drop after the online brokerage fails to get the nod to join the S&P 500

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People wait in line for T-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an initial public offering earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Robinhood shares sold off on Monday as the online brokerage was snubbed in the latest quarterly rebalance of the S&P 500 Index after months of speculation that it could earn a coveted spot in the benchmark.

Shares of Robinhood dropped nearly 5% in premarket trading. The stock has rallied 3.3% Friday to bring last week’s gain to over 13% before the S&P Dow Jones Indices said after the bell that the S&P 500 would remain unchanged.

Just last week, Bank of America called Robinhood a top candidate to join the S&P 500 during the big reshuffling in June. The S&P 500 rebalance, which typically comes on the third Friday of the last month in a quarter, is usually an impactful event as it can spark billions of dollars of trading and spur passive funds to snap up its shares. Companies being added to the index can generally expect funds like that to buy huge amounts of their shares in the coming weeks.

Crypto exchange Coinbase was the latest beneficiary of such an inclusion. The stock skyrocketed 24% in the next trading session following the announcement last month.

Still, Robinhood has had a major comeback this year so far with shares doubling in price. The online brokerage’s shares hit a fresh record high last week amid a rebound in both stocks and crypto. The company had fallen out of favor after the GameStop trading mania of 2021 fizzled and the collapse of FTX triggered a sell-off in digital assets.

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UK’s FCA teams up with Nvidia to let banks experiment with AI

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Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

LONDON — Britain’s financial services watchdog on Monday announced a new tie-up with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to let banks safely experiment with artificial intelligence.

The Financial Conduct Authority said it will launch a so-called Supercharged Sandbox that will “give firms access to better data, technical expertise and regulatory support to speed up innovation.”

Starting from October, financial services institutions in the U.K. will be allowed to experiment with AI using Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI Enterprise Software products, the watchdog said in a press release.

The initiative is designed for firms in the “discovery and experiment phase” with AI, the FCA noted, adding that a separate live testing service exists for firms further along in AI development.

“This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so,” Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer, said in a statement. “We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth.”

The FCA’s new sandbox addresses a key issue for banks, which have faced challenges shipping advanced new AI tools to their customers amid concerns over risks around privacy and fraud.

Large language models from the likes of OpenAI and Google send data back to overseas facilities — and privacy regulators have raised the alarm over how this information is stored and processed. There have meanwhile been several instances of malicious actors using generative AI to scam people.

Nvidia is behind the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to train and run powerful AI models. The company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, is expected to give a keynote talk at a tech conference in London on Monday morning.

Last year, HSBC’s generative AI lead, Edward Achtner, told a London tech conference he sees “a lot of success theater” in finance when it comes to artificial intelligence — hinting that some financial services firms are touting advances in AI without tangible product innovations to show for it.

He added that, while banks like HSBC have used AI for many years, new generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT come with their own unique compliance risks.

Zopa CEO: Fintechs face challenges when it comes to scaling in the UK

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