{"id":879590,"date":"2026-09-04T10:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T10:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/879590\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T10:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T10:28:09","slug":"could-this-be-one-of-the-best-ai-investments-on-the-asx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/879590\/","title":{"rendered":"Could this be one of the best AI investments on the ASX?"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEXTDC Ltd (ASX: NXT<\/a>) has become one of the clearest ways for Australian investors to gain exposure to the artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> boom. <\/p>\n

I think the opportunity could become much larger from here.<\/p>\n

For investors comfortable with the risks that come with such rapid expansion, NEXTDC would be high on my ASX AI buy list.<\/p>\n

\"Glowing<\/p>\n

Image source: Getty Images<\/p>\n

AI needs somewhere to run<\/p>\n

The investment case starts with a simple physical constraint.<\/p>\n

AI requires enormous amounts of computing power, and that infrastructure needs secure buildings, huge amounts of electricity, sophisticated cooling, and reliable connections to networks and cloud platforms. <\/p>\n

NEXTDC builds and operates the data centres that bring those requirements together.<\/p>\n

AI is also changing what customers need from these facilities. NEXTDC says demand is moving towards larger deployments, higher power densities, and infrastructure capable of supporting advanced computing and liquid cooling.<\/p>\n

I like this position because NEXTDC does not need to predict which AI model or application will eventually dominate.<\/p>\n

If companies continue spending heavily on computing infrastructure, they will need somewhere capable of running it.<\/p>\n

Customers are already committing<\/p>\n

The strongest part of the story for me is that NEXTDC is seeing customers reserve enormous amounts of capacity ahead of delivery.<\/p>\n

At the end of FY26<\/a>, contracted utilisation had reached 740.1MW, while only 175MW was already billing.<\/p>\n

That gap represents a substantial amount of contracted capacity still to be built, delivered, and eventually converted into revenue.<\/p>\n

Earlier in 2026, NEXTDC estimated that its contracted utilisation at the time could generate more than $1 billion of EBITDA<\/a> once delivered, without assuming additional customer wins. <\/p>\n

For me, this makes the AI thesis much more tangible. <\/p>\n

NEXTDC is investing billions of dollars because customers are signing contracts for capacity, rather than management simply building facilities and hoping demand arrives later. <\/p>\n

There is a price for rapid expansion<\/p>\n

This opportunity requires an extraordinary amount of capital.<\/p>\n

NEXTDC has been raising equity<\/a>, debt, and hybrid funding to accelerate construction, while major developments need access to land, power, equipment, and skilled workers. <\/p>\n

Execution, therefore, becomes critical. Delays, cost overruns, financing pressures, or slower AI infrastructure spending could all hurt returns. Investors also need patience because there can be a long gap between signing a customer and the new capacity beginning to generate revenue.<\/p>\n

I think those risks justify treating NEXTDC as a growth investment rather than assuming AI demand guarantees success.<\/p>\n

Foolish takeaway<\/p>\n

What excites me about NEXTDC is the amount of future business already taking shape.<\/p>\n

AI is pushing computing requirements sharply higher, and customers are committing to NEXTDC’s capacity years before much of it starts billing.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of expensive construction still ahead, but I think this ASX stock has positioned itself in a valuable part of the AI infrastructure chain.<\/p>\n

If it delivers the capacity already contracted and continues winning demand, I believe it could become one of the ASX’s standout long-term AI investments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEXTDC Ltd (ASX: NXT) has become one of the clearest ways for Australian investors to gain exposure to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-879590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}