Featuring the editor of Infrastructure Investor alongside industry titans, this interactive session will take the pulse of the private infrastructure market - combining expert perspectives with real-time audience sentiment. How bullish is the market on returns? Where are the biggest risks over the next 12–24 months? And where are the most compelling risk-adjusted opportunities emerging? Cast your vote, benchmark your views against the room and join the debate.

• Dissecting the narrative shift in infrastructure amidst recent geopolitical volatility
• Compressing return expectations for LPs - re-pricing of risk or a permanent reset?
• Inflation linkage as a hedge – is this still a source of protection and is it reflected in valuations?

• Reframing the AI bubble question around long-term infrastructure – short-term hype
• Is the pace of spending and scale of AI capex sustainable, or a sign of bubble-like overcommitment?
• How can investors distinguish structural demand from temporary AI-driven capacity requirements?

• The scale of demand in the age of the AI power crunch
• Interconnection as the real bottleneck
• The causal link between rising wholesale prices and community fallout
• What does genuine modernisation of the grid require?

• Is mid-market fundraising holding up on a deal-count basis?
• The expanding definition of transport, logistics & other sectors in the mid-market space
• Assessing the impact of megafunds encroaching on mid-market territory

• How has the politics-infrastructure relationship evolved?
• Defence as Europe's pivotal new infrastructure theme?
• The role of PPPs in modern infrastructure investment - do they still hold up?

Francois Lejeune, Head of Infrastructure Finance, AG Insurance

• From 'show me the opportunity' to 'show me the defensiveness' - evolving LP considerations
• Land, power and permitting as real supply constraints
• Tackling the community engagement problem

• The structural shift from bank lending to private debt funds
• Divergent regulatory timelines including Basel IV: EU, UK, US & elsewhere, and what that means for infrastructure credit
• Capturing the origination opportunity

• From training campuses to inference at the edge - breaking the old location rulebook?
• Where are the new frontiers showing up?
• The training/inference location split

• Strategic: long-term targets amid compressing returns
• Tactical: risk and valuation views in real time
• Operational: the co-investment/direct/fund debate - are we seeing a re-balancing?
• Concentration risk as an emerging governance concern

Gustav Thorén, Portfolio Manager, Infrastructure, AP3

• Nvidia's $500bn+ compute financing partnership with leading infra managers
• Is compute a new infrastructure category in its own right?
• What does this mean for investors and other managers?

• The evolving opportunity set
• GP-led single/multi-asset vs. traditional LP deals
• The pricing squeeze on the LP-deal side

• Digging into the detail: distinguishing well-structured deals from speculative ones
• Hyperscaler capex hitting new highs
• The daisy-chain question: the trade-off between independent cashflow and circular financing
• Is there a real overbuild risk?

• The GP consolidation wave - impacts on the market
• To what extent is insurance capital reshaping ownership?
• Scale as a competitive necessity, not just a nice-to-have advantage

• Dissecting the blackout, cyber and interconnection challenge
• Data centers - resilience risk or resilience partner?
• Addressing the capital allocation challenge for resilience capex - proving the ROI case to investors

• Assessing the shortfalls with renewables returns and merchant price exposure
• Where have mistakes been made, and what lessons have been learnt?
• Redefining 'energy transition' - is power taking over as a thematic?

• Examining the macro backdrop - rates, valuations, AI-driven capital flows 
• The role of private infrastructure leaders in a deglobalized world
• Where women are gaining ground in GP leadership, fund formation and LP allocation roles

• Live case studies from recent mid-market transactions across sectors and regions
• How are mid-market GPs are differentiating sourcing from megafunds moving downmarket?
• Operational value creation levers unique to mid-market platforms versus larger buyouts

• The premium being paid for data centers and the risks behind it
• Public market nervousness vs. operator conviction
• Construction cost inflation and replacement-cost economics

• Large-cap vs. small/mid-cap performance thresholds
• The performance debate: outperformance or sector timing?
• Who's actually 'in' the mid-market and who isn't?

• To what extent is Infrastructure becoming a tool for national sovereignty?
• The sovereign AI compute build-out as the leading edge?
• Assessing risk in the sovereignty trade amidst geopolitical volatility

• North America, Europe, APAC, MENA
• Fundraising growth vs. returns by region
• Does government involvement in projects provide regional risk mitigation for private capital?

• Considering tariffs and trade policy as a live variable
• The post-OBBBA renewables pivot
• Addressing the data center paradox: growth & opportunity vs political & local backlash

• Defining infrastructure-adjacent opportunities
• Long-term, contract-based - which characteristics are key?
• The classification challenge for LPs and GPs
• How far can the definition stretch before becoming strategy drift?

• Measuring skill-based performance data
• Direct alpha vs. traditional manager benchmarking
• Does GP outperformance persist across vintages, or is it noise?

• Germany: the €500bn defence-linked infrastructure opportunity
• UK: new leadership and the National Wealth Fund
• France: political dysfunction as a value opportunity
• CEE: from catching-up story to allocation destination
• Where else lies opportunity?

• Are we experiencing a market correction on the impact and ESG agenda?
• Conservatism vs. conviction on renewables and ESG approaches
• Lessons for considering impact-driven allocations going forward

• Real fundraising and portfolio-construction case studies from recent first-time and second-fund managers
• What are LPs screening for when building emerging manager programmes?
• Overcoming hurdles to move forward from the emerging manager profile

• Refocusing the lens - from giga-cities to AI infrastructure & energy?
• Tracking the boots-on-the-ground GP build-out
• Considering conflicts and geopolitics in a volatile Gulf region

• Lessons learned from UK and other regional water utility issues
• Reframing water as a growth opportunity
• Industrial demand as an underappreciated driver - how to seize the advantage

• The LP starting point: Australia over-allocated, other regions under-allocated?
• The fund-vs-direct pivot reshaping Australian LP behaviour - how does this compare to LP capital allocation across Asia?
• Where capital is being committed, and in which sectors?

• DPI - the metric that matters most to LPs?
• The scale of the distributions drought
• The toolkit for crystallising DPI: CVs, partial exits, dividend recaps

• The J-curve, downside protection and the narrowing debt/equity spread - where do specific strategies land?
• Secondaries - the natural non-primary route and a growth market?
• Building a balanced portfolio across primaries, secondaries, credit and CVs

• A glance at the scoreboard - how investment and spend between clean and traditional energy compares globally
• The real rebalancing story: grids and battery storage focus over renewables vs fossil fuel?
• Demand opening the door - natural gas's AI-driven moment?

• Sharpening minds: 2026’s heatwaves, wildfires and natural disasters
• Treating climate as a systemic security risk, not just an environmental one
• Adaptation vs. mitigation - where should private infrastructure capital flow in the face of increasing vulnerability?

• Operational value creation as the dominant return driver
• GPs building direct development capability in-house
• Is the GP/LP division of labour collapsing?

• SIPA's latest performance and benchmarking data
• What does the data mean for LP and GP decision-making?
• Equity and debt performance, sector and regional benchmarks, and manager alpha

• Considering the full spectrum: stratospheric managers, squeezed mid-market, zombie managers
• What's driving top-heavy concentration?
• The GP relevance question

Data-Driven Debate: Infrastructure credit - investment grade, sub-IG and unitranche

• Detailing the scale of the shift into infrastructure allocations
• Partnerships with fund managers
• Going direct, going bigger and betting on AI infrastructure

Karim Mourad, Global Head of Infrastructure, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority

• Live case studies from recent deals across MENA, APAC, Latin America and CEE
• What separates a bankable growth-market transaction from one that stalls at financial close?
• How GPs are structuring risk mitigation in practice

• Big Tech's involvement & AI data center demand
• Tracking the numbers - how is deal volume ramping up?
• Is this genuine core infrastructure yet, or still venture/technology risk in an infrastructure wrapper?

Moderator: Luba Kotzeva, Founder & CEO, Etara

• Making the infrastructure case for waste and materials
• Where is circular economy capital flowing? How do different organisations approach it?
• Logistics’ identity crisis - real estate or infrastructure, and why it matters

• The shift toward quality over quantity: de-risked, operational projects over greenfield development
• The AI/data center connection: on-site storage expanding into grid services
• Considering technology risk and durability around lithium-ion and elsewhere

• How do platform-seeded vehicles compare with traditional blind-pool fundraising?
• Continuation vehicles, evergreens and thematic strategies converging on the same platforms - raising questions of conflicts of interest, valuation consistency and governance
• Who does platform power truly work for in the market?

• The scale of evergreen and semi-liquid fund flows
• Have recent private credit stress & redemptions strengthened infrastructure’s appeal for private wealth?
• Facing the liquidity question for retail investors in an illiquid asset class

David Hansen, Head of Private Debt & Infrastructure, LBBW Asset Management

• Why transport has lagged behind digital and energy in LP portfolios, and is this slowly changing?
• The access problem: specialist vs. generalist managers
• How are flexible allocators solving the access disconnect?

• Addressing the persistent bid-ask spread standoff
• Is asset-size growth shrinking the buyer pool?
• What impact does this have on exits and LP concerns?

• Assessing the sheer scale of trade disruption hitting hard infrastructure
• How is geopolitics physically rerouting global shipping? And what impact does that have on investors?
• Unique challenges and opportunities in the aviation market
• Where can disciplined GPs and LPs find value?

Kamil Burganov, Senior Vice President, Infrastructure, GIC

• Sizing the opportunity - how much capital is being launched into space?
• What exactly GPs are underwriting: ground stations, broadband, Earth observation data and beyond
• What should LPs be asking as satellites are classified critical infrastructure?

• A record 2025 vs a slow 2026 - what’s the outlier and where are we now?
• Why is it taking longer for funds to achieve final close?
• The LP allocation gap: conviction vs distribution
• Flight to quality - where allocations are actually landing

• The latest PEI fundraising data: totals, time-to-close, and manager concentration
• How 2025's record haul compares with a slower 2026, and what 2027 might have in store
• Where the push for quality is showing up most clearly in the numbers

• The portfolio-construction case: return expectations versus equities, PE, real estate, direct lending and bonds
• Championing the long-term play? How has infrastructure stacked up to geopolitical volatility?
• Infrastructure's maturing toolkit - secondaries, CVs, evergreens - versus its closest private-market peers
• Does infrastructure’s future belong outside of the alternatives bucket?

• Is the 'emerging market' label itself outdated?
• Diverging return drivers by market type
• The bankability gap in practice
• How are global GPs and LPs now approaching increasingly intertwined markets?

• Where is the convergence most visible?
• Assets that look like real estate but behave like infrastructure economically
• The benefits case: enhance risk/return vs siloed approach?
• The cons: does bucketing them together risk masking different risk drivers?

• Where AI is saving time: origination, diligence, LP reporting and more
• What do LPs now expect from their GPs regarding AI application?
• Does AI adoption widen the gap between leading and lagging managers?