Invesco has found sovereign wealth funds and central banks increasing their focus on energy assets, infrastructure, and gold as geopolitical fragmentation, inflation shocks, and concerns over the US dollar reshape long-term portfolio strategy.
The investment manager’s latest survey covered 90 sovereign wealth funds and 54 central banks, which together manage around $29tn. It found that energy security and energy-transition infrastructure have become more attractive as investors look for assets that can support resilience in a more volatile global economy.
According to the survey, 80% of respondents said energy security and transition infrastructure represented credible investments for resilience. Sovereign wealth funds now hold around 9% of their assets in infrastructure, while demand linked to artificial intelligence data centres is making power and grid investment more prominent in asset allocation decisions.
The findings also show greater concern over currency concentration and public debt. Around 61% of central banks said US debt levels were damaging the dollar’s long-term reserve role, up sharply from 20% in 2024. Nearly one-third planned to increase gold holdings.
Benjamin Jones, head of research and insight at Invesco, said: “In a world of inflation shocks, geopolitical fragmentation and more concentrated markets, investors are rethinking old assumptions about diversification and redesigning portfolios to withstand a wider range of outcomes.
“Resilience is becoming a hard requirement, not a nice-to-have.”
The survey points to a structural change in how large public investors are thinking about risk. For years, diversification was often framed around the balance between equities, bonds, and reserve currencies. That framework has become more complicated as government debt levels rise, bond markets become more volatile, and geopolitical tensions affect capital flows, supply chains, and energy security.
Energy assets sit at the centre of several investment themes at once. They offer exposure to infrastructure, inflation-linked revenue, transition finance, energy security, and industrial demand. They also sit behind the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, where data centres are placing new demands on power generation, grid capacity, and cooling systems.
The connection between AI and energy is becoming harder to ignore. Concerns that AI agents are outpacing enterprise governance controls have focused attention on the operational risks of rapid adoption, while Invesco’s survey shows how the same technology boom is shaping demand for energy and infrastructure exposure.
Shifts by sovereign investors affect funding conditions, infrastructure partnerships, and asset prices. If more long-horizon capital moves towards energy infrastructure, grid upgrades, storage, and transition assets, project finance could deepen. Competition for quality infrastructure assets may also increase valuations, placing more pressure on return discipline.
The survey’s findings on the dollar do not point to an immediate break with the world’s main reserve currency, but they do show a reassessment of concentration risk. Higher US debt, sanctions risk, clearing exposure, and geopolitical fragmentation are encouraging some institutions to review custodians, counterparties, and reserve composition.
Companies with dollar debt, dollar revenues, or dollar-priced inputs will need to keep those shifts under review. Treasury teams are already having to pay closer attention to hedging, liquidity, counterparty concentration, and the assumptions behind long-term financing plans.
The renewed interest in gold also signals a search for assets that are not directly tied to sovereign credit risk. That is another indication that large public investors are preparing for a world in which old safe-haven assumptions are less settled than they were before the pandemic, the inflation shock, and renewed geopolitical competition.
Energy security, infrastructure capacity, currency diversification, and inflation protection are now part of the core allocation conversation. Companies seeking capital will increasingly need to show how their strategies fit a more defensive, infrastructure-led investment landscape.
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