In this episode, JP Morgan’s private bank released their 2026 outlook, and it is surprisingly bullish on real assets. We dissect the report to find where land investors should position themselves in an AI-driven economy.
Key Takeaways:
- AI Stickiness: 45% of enterprises already pay for LLMs, meaning AI revenue is real, unlike the DotCom bubble.
- Housing Shortage: The US housing market is underbuilt by 3-4 million units; Build-to-Rent (BTR) land plays are the most resilient asset class.
- Infrastructure Yield: Global infrastructure assets are yielding 8-12% returns, providing a hedge against sticky inflation caused by deglobalization.
Listen to the full episode to understand the macro trends that will dictate land values over the next decade.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious. Today, I wanted to share some insights from the JP Morgan Private Bank Outlook for 2026. can see a lot of, I mean, this is typical for a lot of content production toward the end of the year. It’s like, okay, reflections on the previous year outlook for the coming year. I like it. It works. know, end of year is a perfect time for reflection here.
And I think this report is very, very well done. I’ve never read JPM’s annual report prior to this year, but it was linked over to me more recently. So it’s about 60-ish pages of PDF, a lot of diagrams and so forth. I would highly encourage you to, it’s for free.
Download it at your convenience here. Skim it at a minimum, I’d suggest. But I read the full thing. Just found it very, very valuable. like the overarching takeaway is, you know, a lot of the banks and so forth, like when you, when you read their outlooks takeaways, like they just, you know, they tend to be more conservative, right? Like banker, I mean, yeah, we had the GFC crisis where, the bankers were just being, you know, far too liberal with their.
underwriting and, you know, cash allocations, like that banks have just changed, you know, pretty significantly. just, you know, underwriting tends to be more secure and it’s backed by more underlying liquidity and assets ratio. And I think it’s like federally required to be doing all of this anyway. I forget from which piece of regulation.
But I found this to be like just a very, very well research report. mean, it should be. JP Morgan is one of the 10 largest companies in the world and specifically the private bank division, you know, manages their high net worth clients. think you generally, like there’s some exceptions, but generally you need a, at least $10 million in, you know, liquid assets within Chase’s.
core asset management systems, pretty significant. Not many folks in the world can qualify for that. So they tend to have their highest level analysts and operators within their private bank division just to kind of set the scene here. And so their overall takeaways, it was more bullish.
more bullish than I would have expected here. And honestly, their arguments have made, know, I’m from a real estate perspective, I would still be more bearish in terms of, I think the job market and just, you know, the overall amount of folks who can afford land and so forth are still just low, it’s still going to be more of a buyer’s market across, I think, much of the country. But I’m
you know, from a this pure macro perspective and thinking about, you know, possible AI bubble, all that type of stuff. I’m more headed in the direction towards at least kind of a more balanced viewpoint to potentially bullish here. I’m like, I’m very, very bullish on just the opportunity of AI itself. But, whether we’re going to have some short term hits or how quickly it’s going to hit the job market, I think it’s really hard to predict. But, you know,
we’ll kind of see which future kind of comes to pass here. so, know, chase overall is like, yeah, there’s definitely some warning signs within the AI bubble, but they don’t see it about to burst here. So I’m gonna just point out a handful of things and it’s a longer report you can read for yourself. But a key point that they mention is
And you really have to look at this from your own business as well, It’s just, you know, almost half, 45 % of businesses as of three months ago, September 2025, so probably even more now, already have active LLM subscriptions. Over 300,000 enterprises or customers of Anthropic who have like, you know, pretty much shifted purely to a B2B.
type of setup, know, kind of letting Gemini and Chant 2PT take over the B2C space. Like who’s going to stop paying for these? Like their revenue generation and the prices like keep going up for the most part for these models here. Like what businesses are just going to stop paying for these and stop fueling or funneling revenue into these AI?
Um, companies. like we saw in like the.com. So like the, the.com, uh, bubble companies, like they weren’t generating revenue, a ton of them. They just had really inflated, um, valuations, but like a lot of these AI companies, yeah, they might have crazy capex and all that. Um, but they have so many customers and it’s growing. Like, again, look at your own business here too. Look, look, look at ours where, like, if I’m looking at my tech stack here,
as hairy as things could potentially get. Like if I was just having to like, you know, look at my entire stack of overhead and you were to rank, you know, every single software and technology that’s, you know, part of your company here, which ones would you just start checking off as far as like, oh, if we had to make cuts here, like if you could only save, I don’t know, three to five.
pieces of your tech stack, like what would you say if like an LLM would have to be one of them, right? Like I suppose you could try to use one of the free versions. You’re just going to get capped so quickly on utility there. Like to me, I would fight tooth and nail like basically down like saving an LLM subscription.
like might be my number one choice to, uh, to maintain. I’d really have to think about it there, but again, like it’s a thought exercise. Um, like how much do you value these things? And I think a lot of businesses are on the same, um, same situation, like no matter how bad the economy gets, like you can’t, you can’t throw out your, your own subscription. Um, like it’s just too valuable. Um, and, uh, so yeah, I mean, they go in, okay.
we see what could be a potential boom versus a bust here. They mentioned the various paradigm shifts and I’ve seen a number of folks make these arguments. I’m sure you’ve heard of them too. know, the railways in the late 1800s and the telecom infrastructure in the late 1990s, the abundance of, you know, the availability of credit and, you know, increasing leverage.
decreasing underwriting standards, valuations versus cash flows, feedback loop driven by speculation and versus broad participation here. ultimately, they kind of steal the arguments that the AI bubble, even assuming we are in one, think most people would agree with it, but is it really going to go bust?
They’re pointing out that the factors weighing against a potential bust are just, you know, more stacked in the favor of kind of like a stable operating environment compared to some of those previous bubbles that burst in the past year. In particular, yeah, there are some operators and companies that are at higher risk.
with their debt obligations and ability to generate revenue. the key thing is some of the best, if not the best companies ever created in the history of the earth that are so capital efficient and generate so much cash flow. The Microsofts, the Amazon, Alphabet, Apple as well, Meta, they just generate tons and tons of cash.
that they’re still able to position themselves well even during this hyperscaling period here. So, makes a big argument, like the biggest risk is just not having exposure to AI, least part of your portfolio or just utilizing it within your own business. But they’re making…
Note, yeah, there’s old jobs lost, new jobs are born here. And they are noting, you know, know there’s been like discrepancies across various reports here of like, is AI really adding productivity and so forth? They’re citing some examples. Yeah, the early returns on higher productivity are encouraging here. But, you know, you have to…
still have kind of like tepid expectations. Like it takes a while for humans to fully embrace technology. talked about that in more recent podcasts as well too. And, you know, they’re just mentioning, yeah, I mean, even if a bunch of jobs might get cut out here, like they do mention, know, there’s, you know, compared to 1940, there was a study by MIT where, you know, more than 60 % of today’s jobs did not exist.
Yeah, roughly 85 years ago. So like this is just the way that the world works. And even if AI can continue to take more job opportunity, specifically from task sets that people are performing, they’re like, yeah, humans will just happen during advantages, know, common sense.
Causal reasoning, emotional intelligence, high stakes judgment, adaptive learning, intrinsic motivation, especially the latter one, that last one, intrinsic motivation. I don’t know if AI can ever be motivated for further growth here. Where’s some of the other ones? I think you could eventually teach it common sense and causal reasoning. Honestly, even emotional intelligence, high stakes judgment is tougher.
but I think you can get there. Like this is the AGI promise, right? AGI think can do all this, but will it ever have motivation? That’s an open question. So again, food for thought there. Still, so many people are AI passengers versus drivers, which I always mention. You still have a lot of room to use judgment with today’s current LLM models.
They do mention more about the potential limits to AI expansion. There’s the energy piece here. A lot of the infrastructure, like 70 % of power lines across the US are over a quarter century old. China’s been doing a lot better with building additional power generation. something to consider. know folks are…
debating this actively, we add some nuclear generation and so forth. Resource scarcity, privacy, safety concerns, all that’s going to shape public sentiment. That might create or destroy a lot of financial value here. So TBD, that’s probably the biggest piece here. And even on the water peat, like how much water are you utilizing for data centers? That’s been largely debunked. There just isn’t that much water necessary to run.
you know, various AI queries, or far less than, than you might expect. like the power generation piece is still a way, way bigger factor. and so, yeah. And, and then, you know, private bank kind of goes into, you know, who’s kind of winning the race here and what to kind of, Look out for as far as an investment strategy. like, yeah, stay focused on the hyperscalers, large, large cap.
Um, you know, the, the Microsoft’s that the alphabet’s like I mentioned, um, and they’re actually, yeah. Amazon meta. know I mentioned them earlier. They’re like, yeah, they’re actually a little bit more tepid about that based on free cash. Um, or Oracle has really taken a hit, uh, lately. So, you know, still for large kept leaders are going to be, um, more positioned to continue to take advantage of this, you know, find opportunity within that AI supply chain. Um,
you know, the various semiconductors, Nvidia, still probably as a chance for other potential competitors here, transformers, networking equipment, fiber and subsidy scales. Like all this can, you know, I was looking at this from like a land perspective too, like there’s still so much physical infrastructure, which tends to be the lowest possible alpha from an investment perspective. Like when you’re, you’re jumping on, you know, the
base stakes to create value, like just further down the value chain, but there’s still so much opportunity there with how much actual real estate is needed just to fuel and provide what we need to take AI to the largest possible outcome here. So yeah, being able to extract resources with the rare metals, valuable land and water rights. Like if you can…
work on that type of level, like you’re still going to be able to hit the jackpot from a physical infrastructure type perspective. then, who are those smart corporate users of AI? And very interestingly, and this is kind like the rich get richer theme here is that
Oftentimes you think of like those larger enterprises with thousands, tens of thousands of employees, like they’re just kind of being slower to move. Oftentimes that is the case, but they have actually adopted AI quicker and that they’re able to more efficiently integrate AI into their existing work streams and.
business models here. So, pretty darn interesting from that perspective. Usually, I think it like startups moving a bit quicker here, but yeah, it’s really more of the entrenched corporations that are actually making bigger gains from that side. And similar to how I’ve mentioned on other podcasts and stuff too, like, yeah, and private bank, know, JPM points us out to it’s like SaaS companies probably are not capturing enough value from AI enhanced products.
and, you know, half of the stocks within their broad software index, fell over this past year. And even though it was like, you know, still in that 17 % game because you had the AI companies, within it, you know, a lot of SAS is going to be eating it hard over the coming months to years here. if you can get private exposure to AI companies, they recommend that,
Uh, various, yeah, like 60 % of VC investment in AI over the past year, roughly, uh, no surprise there, but, um, what they really pinpoint is, um, just how we have, like from a public opportunity side, um, where the value is accruing. Like we haven’t seen anything from a platform.
technology or an application perspective. So like what I mentioned earlier, and so there’s some public exposure to this too, is like for a phase one of any technological build out, have the physical infrastructure here. So, you that can be, you your power, your data centers. Um, and then there’s the digital infrastructure, which also has a lot of public exposure. Like think about Nvidia. Um, so that can relate to the core hardware, like the semiconductors that are powering AI. Um, so there’s already been like 10 trillion plus in value created just from
digital infrastructure, physical, maybe like a trillion or so, still really big numbers, right? But so far for a platform technology, which could just be like base LLMs or APIs that are utilizing AI and then applications, which could be full AI enabled software, AI co-pilots, various agents that are built for custom solutions.
Like those are just purely private enterprises at the moment here. Like there’s no public availability for you to invent. Like it’s just too early of a technology for these platform technologies and applications that the public’s even gone. And we’re going to see that change when Anthropic and OpenAI go public over the coming year here. So it allows the public to actually get in, like, you know.
JPM thinks that, you know, typically the most value is created the higher up the chain, you go to the platform technologies and the actual applications create the most value. Again, look at the internet, the applications eventually created the highest value after the infrastructure plays. So something to really keep in mind going forward here.
Yeah, they’re kind of mentioning like within your portfolio, tech and tech related sectors are, you about half of the S and P total market cap. So just FYI, the U S has largely made a bet on AI. So it could go, the other direction if, things, you know, don’t pan out in a more, more bullish sense. the other two pieces here, again, I know I really wanted to spend the most time on the AI side, because I think it’s most interesting to us as entrepreneurs.
A couple other things here to mention. So the other part two is just like, yeah, there’s a deglobalization going on. Peter Zion talks about this all the time. If you haven’t checked out any of his works, I highly recommend it. He’s probably a bit more bearish in, especially from a tech perspective, but for just an overall understanding of geopolitical dynamics and demographics all across the world, like there’s few folks better than him that have a grasp on that type of thing.
And this is just more mainstream topic now. Private banks pointing this out. Yeah, there’s just a lot of reshoring of industrialization. Is it all going to go to the US? It’s unclear. That’s the goal. But is it actually heading in that direction at the moment? Not really. Terrors are kind of having the opposite impact of that. But can we bring more into the Western Hemisphere just to make it easier?
And even with all these tariffs, there’s still lower net tariffs on Canada and Mexico. you know, know, and like, you know, the heat of kind of the arguments between those compared to the earlier part of the year has diminished. So those are really the partners that we should continue to invest into. You know, our reliance on China has gone down as well, too, like this is just going to be a continued trend. This is just worth a whole other discussion here.
But again, is just kind of investment thesis across the entire world that PrivateBake is mentioning. Yeah, de-globalization, keep in mind, probably a lot more reshoring. Might be higher costs to build infrastructures within the US or the Western Hemisphere, but it’s more secure. The supply chains are more reliable, especially for semiconductors. It might not even be possible to build those out.
You know, in Peter’s words for potentially, you know, multiple decades, if a piece of the semiconductor global supply chain bust down right now, we’ll see, I guess, in probably a matter of years here. Yeah, they’re mentioning kind of. Energy pieces where, yeah, United States, China kind of clear advantage of cost of electricity. China, I’m surprised they mentioned more bullish there because they have to import.
all of their oil. So, you know, I know they’re kind of relying on some hydropower and a lot of coal still very dirty electricity. So, you know, we’ll kind of see. But in order to fuel like just cars or industrialization, like they have to import their oil from, you know, the Middle East, which is not not an easy trip.
mentioning kind of stores of value, dollars, et cetera. And then part three is just like, again, deeper focus on the reasons why, but just like expect inflation to be more steady, probably, or even like a little bit higher, just going forward at the moment while we deal with, you know, the growing debt within the US and
potentially can continue to lower interest rates a lot more and that can lead to greater inflation. The tariffs are also impacting inflation as well too, AI investment, having to reshore various supply chains to the Western hemisphere or the US. All of that is inflationary. So just have to be aware of how that might relate to
your approach for various investments here. And they talk about various fixed income sectors, to orient around. Most specific to us as real estate investors is they do mention that there’s still a net US housing shortage. They’re mentioning US is still underbuilt by like three to four million units.
could take another 10 years to close that gap. But again, like they also mentioned, you know, the prices are just about as high as it’s ever been in terms of affordability. And the fact that the monthly cost to buy a home from a mortgage perspective is 50 % higher than the cost of renting a home. So key to keep that in mind. And so like they’re just more bullish on the rental market or, you know,
rental rates just continue to be stronger or just building PTR, know, bill to rent type homes are going to be a stronger play over this coming time, especially as you know, over six million people, a more millennials will enter into that 35 to 49 year age group, a lot more family building. You know, it’s just historically been the prime age for home buying here. So.
You know, have two kind of competing forces here, like really high on affordability, you know, demand for homes, where you kind of meet there probably within the BTR space. but to do BTR, well, like you still need land. there’s a lot of, you know, room for us to, consider this, it, as far as, know, how, how we look at real estate investment. and they, they do mention this like, you know, okay, what, are some asset groups that can.
help fight against inflation a bit, look at commodities, oil, in particular natural gas, which is a critical input for AI data center build out. You could look at that. And then you mentioned, yeah, real assets, infrastructure and real estate. I hadn’t really heard investing into global infrastructure here, but it tends to deliver 8 to 12 % returns here. Inflation resistant cash flows, pretty interesting.
And again, you’re just going to need more demand for power and improving some of that aging infrastructure that I mentioned previously. So even some of the most savvy investment groups in the world, like they’re mentioning 80 % of family offices that they surveyed. So they don’t have any exposure to global infrastructure at large. So it’s like it’s an underappreciated.
asset class and something that we could take advantage of as real estate investors with some creative thinking. And then they were just mentioning, you know, just global real estate. You know, we tend to only really think of U.S. real estate, feel a lot more comfortable there. We have a lot more insight into the data, more consumer protections and so forth. But, you know, can be a solid inflation hedge. We think about that, you know.
just via land, especially. I know a lot of folks will think about that from an investment perspective here. And they were mentioning that…
you know, commercial real estate returns, they actually fell almost 20%, but they had 8 % of net operating income growth, which is pretty crazy. Um, so yeah, uh, not, not really. I would need to think about that stat a little bit more to actually put the, probably go to chat GPT and ask a bit more about that, but, um, uh, kind of interesting from, you know, just how nasty commercial real estate has been, um, over the past, uh, uh, few years here.
But they’re really bullish on rentals and industrial. We’ve seen that. Industrial has tended to have a lot more appreciation whenever we find land in the industrial zone or has a potential zone for industrial. It tends to be pretty inflated. So key to note from that perspective, also, just outside the US, they were really mentioning that Europe as a whole has
you probably a 20 to 40, it’s roughly 20 to 40 % undervalued in relation to, you know, just what the underlying real estate would be expected to be valued at, I guess, based on income. Yeah, that’s generally how land is deemed, you know, over or undervalued, or just real estate writ large. Pretty interesting.
there again, I wouldn’t be just jumping to get outside the US until like we were just exhausted almost every opportunity here, which like we’re not even remotely close and we could work here for the rest of our career and still be scratching the surface. But you know, when you see numbers like that 20 to 40 % undervalued, like the US writ large is largely overvalued at the moment. Like the
real estate market got too hot. So Europe, you’d have to open up a whole bunch of can of worms. The demographics are not nearly as strong. So your buyer pool is going to be way worse compared to maybe like expats buying it or just, you know, various investors looking just for exposure, more speculative, but kind of interesting to note here. So that’s what they’re thinking of. And then they’re thinking, they also mentioned that, yeah, like
hedge funds can be a good place to place money that doing 10 % of your exposure into hedge funds or alternative investments, which we could consider land. mean, that’s like the alternative of alternatives, right? It’s such a risky asset class that few decide to put a lot of money into it. portfolios with that type of alternative exposure have performed much better over the
uh, past 10 years here. So interesting to note if you’re, uh, looking for capital partners with more liquidity, um, to potentially participate in your alternative class. So that’s where we’re at there. Um, again, a bit longer here, but this was, you know, 60 page report. I was trying to zoom through the, uh, uh, key takeaway. So hopefully this helps you for your 2026 outlook. This is fun for me to report on again as well. Um, Serious Land dot Capital for any of your
Land funding needs and subscribe and share. Looking forward to next time. Take care now. Bye.
