BlackRock (BLK) & NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): BlackRock’s Larry Fink Says the US Alone Needs 70 Gigawatts of Power for AI

BlackRock (BLK) & NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): BlackRock’s Larry Fink Says the US Alone Needs 70 Gigawatts of Power for AI Fatima Gulzar Mon, August 17, 2026 at 11:31 PM GMT+2 3 min read NVDA BLK BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK ) CEO Larry Fink joined the CNBC panel this week and laid out the scale of what's needed to power the AI boom. "We're gonna need over 70 gigawatts of power," he said, just for the US.

Why This Matters Fink compared this moment to the birth of the mortgage-backed securities market in the 1970s, when he started his career, calling it the next chapter in financial engineering. That comparison raises a real question: is this genuinely a new frontier for capital markets, or an uneasy echo of the last time Wall Street got excited about securitizing a fast-growing asset? BlackRock, Inc.

(BLK) & NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): BlackRock's Larry Fink Says the US Alone Needs 70 Gigawatts of Power for AI The Bull and Bear Case: NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) Fink called the AI buildout a source of "a fantastic investment" that could draw growing capital allocation over time, positioning NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA )'s hardware at the center of what he framed as a genuinely new asset class rather than a passing trend. The entire plan depends on Nvidia's GPUs holding their value over time rather than depreciating quickly, an assumption short seller Michael Burry has publicly challenged. So far, the companies involved have only signed memos of understanding, not binding contracts.

The Bull and Bear Case: BlackRock Fink said BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) already has some capital ready to deploy but plans to raise "quite a bit more. " He argued the buildout is also a genuine jobs story, noting that even 100 megawatts of data center construction requires roughly 3 million hours of labor.

Fink said the money "has to flow through the American capital markets," since that's the largest pool of capital in the world, and framed US leadership in AI as a national priority worth funding quickly. Fink's own historical comparison carries risk built in. He likened this moment to the start of the mortgage-backed securities market in the 1970s, a market that later became the center of the 2007-2009 financial crisis once defaults rose faster than expected.

BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) is underwriting exposure to a new asset class before pricing and default terms are even settled. Insider Monkey's Hedge Fund Data BlackRock, Inc.

(NYSE:BLK) was held by 79 hedge funds as of Q1 2026, up from 78. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) had 275 holders. Among the six financing partners, Goldman Sachs had 83 holders and Blackstone had 84, putting BlackRock at the lower end of that group.

Conclusion BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK)'s Fink is betting AI compute becomes as foundational to markets as mortgages once were, but that comparison should remind investors how quickly a hot new asset class can turn risky. Story Continues While we acknowledge the potential of BLK as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk.

If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock . READ NEXT: Amazon. com, Inc.

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(AAPL) vs NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA).   Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at  Insider Monkey .