BlackRock warns crypto’s love affair with AI is over as an energy war with Bitcoin miners begins

By Andjela Radmilac – CryptoSlate

BlackRock is telling clients to stop looking at artificial intelligence as software and start treating it as energy.

In its 2026 Global Outlook, the BlackRock Investment Institute argued that the AI buildout is pushing against physical limits and highlighted electricity as the constraint investors are underpricing.

The report’s headline-grabber is its warning that AI-driven data centers could consume as much as 24% of US electricity by 2030, a scale that would reorder everything from utility capex to industrial siting.