Delivering on many fronts: why infrastructure is having its next great moment

It's hard to think of an asset class for which more has aligned in recent years than infrastructure.

Long viewed as a valuable diversifier for investors - offering resilience, durability and diversification through economic cycles - infrastructure also now finds itself at the heart of many of the great growth themes of today: AI, deglobalisation, national resilience and the energy transition.

And that underlines an opportunity set that is fundamentally delivering for investors. 

The MSCI World Infrastructure Index returned 16.48% in 2024, 20.72% in 2025 and 7.47% so far in 2026. 

Over the last 10 years, it has returned 194%. By comparison, the ASX 200 Total Return Index (XNT) has returned 149.9%. 

That's impressive growth for an asset class that is also delivering defensiveness, stability and diversification at a time when those are proving increasingly important.

Part of that growth is undeniably the AI buildout, which has seen infrastructure become one of the leading beneficiaries of a historic capex cycle. 

Global listed infrastructure has a total market cap of approximately US$3 trillion, with a further US$1.5 trillion in private infrastructure assets. And those numbers will continue to grow. 

According to a report by PWC and Oxford Economics, Australia alone is set to invest more than $6.2 trillion in infrastructure by 2050. 

As the profile of infrastructure continues to grow, how do investors need to think about it now? Has the asset class fundamentally changed, and how should you be looking to make the most of the opportunity today? 

Over the next two weeks, Livewire's Infrastructure in Focus series will answer those questions through in-depth interviews with six of the sector's most experienced investors across both listed and private markets. 

The aim is to leave you equipped with the insights and knowledge to make the most of what could be a generational opportunity. 

As Resolution Capital's Sarah Lau told my colleague Anna Dadic: 

"Global listed infrastructure at this point in time is really a trifecta of resiliency, income and growth."

That is a compelling mix for any investor, even if it also arguably underplays the asset class's decades-long track record of doing exactly that. 

One of the biggest themes from the series is that, despite how central is has become to today’s infrastructure growth story, AI is simply the latest tailwind for an asset class that has delivered for investors for decades.

As Peter Meany told me of the railroad boom of 150 years ago: 

"The boom never ended. We just got distracted by other things."

And that is fitting analogy for the asset class as a whole. Infrastructure is back in the spotlight now, it's time you started paying attention.