U.S. stock futures hovered near record highs Monday as investors weighed rising oil prices and uncertainty around a potential agreement between the United States and Iran. Hans Albrecht said the current market rally is being fuelled by growing demand for AI infrastructure, expanding inference workloads and broader adoption of AI tools across businesses.
BNN Bloomberg spoke with Hans Albrecht, equity fund manager at Option Pit, about shifting leadership within the Magnificent Seven, rising competition in semiconductors, why inference demand is reshaping the AI market and the growing pressure AI poses to traditional software business models.
Key Takeaways
- Albrecht said investor enthusiasm around AI infrastructure and compute demand continues to support equity markets despite elevated valuations.
- He argued the market is becoming more selective within large-cap technology stocks, rewarding companies with broader AI ecosystems and infrastructure exposure.
- Albrecht said AI inference workloads are becoming a larger long-term opportunity than the initial training phase, increasing demand for chips, memory and data centre networking.
- He believes semiconductor competition is broadening beyond Nvidia as companies such as Broadcom and Google gain traction in AI infrastructure.
- Albrecht warned AI-driven automation could reduce barriers to entry in software and creative industries, creating uncertainty for companies such as Adobe.
Read the full transcript below:
LINDSAY: S&P futures were at all-time highs earlier this morning despite rising oil prices and a lack of a deal between the U.S. and Iran. Our next guest says the market is being driven by the AI buildout, infinite compute demand and AI broadening to small- and medium-sized businesses. Joining us now is Hans Albrecht, equity fund manager at Option Pit. It’s great to have you join us. Good morning.
HANS: Good morning, Lindsay. Thanks for having me.
LINDSAY: S&P futures were at an all-time high earlier this morning. What do you think about these valuations? Do you feel they’re justified?
HANS: I think things have gotten a little frothy. We’ve seen a very big move up over the past month, with a lot of the heavy lifting being done by tech, AI and the Magnificent Seven, or Magnificent 10, if you will.
I think it’s all based on the reality of this infinite compute demand. That’s very much a real thing. This isn’t like the 1990s, where we built all this capacity and then couldn’t use it. Right now, there isn’t enough capacity. Google said it could have done even better with its cloud numbers if it had the ability to provide more service. Anthropic is basically saying the same thing.
A lot of these really smart companies that are as close as you can be to AI are even underestimating the demand that’s out there. I believe that continues. Stocks are going to do what stocks do. The story is real. We’ll have to see if things are a little overbought here, which I think they are.
LINDSAY: When it comes to your strategy for investing in the Magnificent Seven, what does that look like? How much exposure do you have right now, particularly to Microsoft and Meta? Those are two of the lagging big tech companies at the moment.
HANS: For the year, I’ve been long Apple, Google and Amazon, and short Meta and Microsoft. It’s not that those are bad companies, it’s just that they don’t have the full stack investors want to see these days. Investors want to see multiple areas of AI exposure.
If you don’t have physical exposure, such as a strong chip business, you’re in trouble. Microsoft doesn’t have that. Meta has one, but it’s not really significant. Google has YouTube, cloud and multiple businesses benefiting from AI.
We’re seeing a very binary market. Investors are rather ruthless these days. If you don’t have the full story, you’re not benefiting from that enthusiasm. Apple, Amazon and Google are making all-time highs while Meta and Microsoft remain well below theirs.
Microsoft is a little too close to areas where coding and software-as-a-service businesses are under pressure. Meta is doing well, but it doesn’t have the cloud business or the same infrastructure exposure, even though its advertising business is performing strongly.
LINDSAY: You also say it’s not Nvidia’s world anymore — it’s Broadcom’s. Why do you think that?
HANS: Nvidia was really the only story in town for many years because it dominated the training phase of AI. About a year ago, we started realizing that inference is much more important.
Training is teaching these AI models — ChatGPT, Anthropic products and other large language models. Inference is different. That’s the ongoing phase where the systems are constantly processing information and responding to users. The gears never stop turning.
That shift is creating opportunities for other chipmakers that are more exposed to inference workloads. Nvidia is still going to be a major competitor there, but it has a lot more competition than it used to.
It’s similar to what’s happening in the Magnificent Seven. They all moved higher together, but now the market is starting to pick winners and losers. Nvidia remains a great company and probably isn’t overvalued, but competition from companies such as Google is increasing. Google’s TPUs are very popular and in high demand.
LINDSAY: That was going to be my next question. What does that mean for Nvidia investors? Is it still a good stock to own?
HANS: I think it’s a solid hold. I just think it’s no longer leading the way it once did. It hasn’t really done much for the past seven or eight months.
Broadcom is benefiting because it supplies important pieces of the AI infrastructure puzzle. We’re seeing shortages in memory and growing demand for the networking systems that connect data centres together. That’s an area where Broadcom has strength.
Qualcomm is also becoming important through AI at the edge — AI in devices such as phones, cars and other connected products. In cars, for example, AI decisions have to happen instantly. You can’t send information to the cloud and wait for a response.
LINDSAY: On the flip side, we’ve talked about some of the stocks you like, including Apple. I also want to get to a stock you’re staying away from right now, and that’s Adobe. Why?
HANS: I’ve liked Apple for quite a while. A lot of people criticize Apple because it’s not spending hundreds of billions of dollars to take advantage of AI. But I think Apple is in the right place at the right time.
As soon as consumers realize they need an AI assistant in their pocket, Apple is very well positioned. That’s a major theme for me this year. Apple has a high-margin product and a loyal customer base that will adopt those features.
They’re also selling a lot of Macs. Months ago, I said they would sell out of Macs, and that’s what they recently reported. Macs are very conducive to agentic AI and the kinds of applications people are building now.
Adobe is the opposite side of the coin. AI is creating abundance in areas that once had high barriers to entry. Coding is becoming more accessible, and that changes the software-as-a-service business model that dominated for the past two decades.
I’m oversimplifying when I say anyone can become a coder overnight, but the writing is on the wall. Investors can no longer confidently project 15 or 20 years of predictable cash flow from some software companies because we don’t know where those businesses will be in a few years.
Markets don’t like uncertainty. That’s why investors are reacting so aggressively. It’s a very binary market.
LINDSAY: There’s already plenty of uncertainty in the markets as it is. We’ll have to leave it there. Hans Albrecht, equity fund manager at Option Pit. Great to have you with us this morning. Thanks so much.
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This BNN Bloomberg summary and transcript of the May 11, 2026 interview with Hans Albrecht are published with the assistance of AI. Original research, interview questions and added context was created by BNN Bloomberg journalists. An editor also reviewed this material before it was published to ensure its accuracy and adherence with BNN Bloomberg editorial policies and standards.
