The Bridge by iCapital

How will artificial intelligence, data connectivity, and evolving infrastructure reshape the future of wealth management?

In Episode 26 of The Bridge, Sonali Basak sits down with Lawrence Calcano, Chairman and CEO of iCapital, for a wide-ranging conversation on the technologies transforming financial services.

Lawrence shares why he believes AI will enhance rather than replace financial advisors, how partnerships with Anthropic and DTCC are helping address industry-wide challenges, and why education remains critical to the broader adoption of private markets. They also explore the growing importance of data connectivity, the future of tokenization, leadership lessons from scaling...

Has the Fed entered a new era? 

In Episode 25 of The Bridge, host Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with Stephen Miran, senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management and former Federal Reserve Governor, to unpack the forces reshaping markets today. 

They explore why rising Treasury yields may reflect stronger growth expectations rather than inflation fears, how changing Fed dynamics are contributing to market volatility, and why commonly cited inflation measures may not tell the full story. The conversation also examines housing affordability, supply constraints, global trade shifts, and what investors should wa...

AI is creating one of the largest financing cycles in modern market history. Who's going to pay for it? 

Amanda Lynam, chief credit strategist at Goldman Sachs, joins Sonali Basak to discuss how a multi-year, trillion-dollar AI buildout is reshaping public and private credit markets. Together, they explore where AI financing is coming from, why hyperscalers are only part of the story, and how investors are evaluating opportunities across data centers, chip financing, and related infrastructure. 

Lynam explains why the biggest challenge may not be access to capital, but determining where and how to take AI...

Everyone is talking about AI. But can the economics keep up with the hype?

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, joins Sonali Basak to discuss how AI is reshaping markets, corporate spending, entrepreneurship, and the broader economy.

As higher interest rates force investors to focus on revenue, profits, and cash flow, Slok argues that the key question is no longer whether demand for AI exists, but whether companies can generate returns that justify the unprecedented capital being deployed.

Key topics include:

Everyone is talking about AI. But who is actually capturing the value?

Holden Spaht, Managing Partner at Thoma Bravo, joins Sonali Basak to discuss why enterprise software may emerge stronger, not weaker, in the age of AI. Rather than a "SaaS apocalypse," Spaht argues that AI's impacts have been counterintuitive, producing meaningful software investments and huge opportunities for companies with deep domain knowledge.

As the conversation around AI spending shifts from adoption to ROI, Spaht believes that proprietary data and years of customer context will become increasingly important competitive advantages. Enterprise so...

Private credit was one of the defining investment stories of 2026.

In this special compilation episode of The Bridge, Sonali Basak brings together insights from some of the industry's leading investors to explore the year's biggest debates, from liquidity concerns and credit fundamentals to manager selection, valuations, and underwriting discipline.

Featuring insights from:

Jack Neumark, Co-CEO & Managing Partner, Fortress Investment Group

Victor Khosla, Founder & CIO, Strategic Value Partners

Steve Tananbaum, Founding Partner & CIO, GoldenTree Asset Management

Vivek...

Khalil Hibri, co-Founder of Tangible Markets, joins Sonali Basak to discuss how investors are increasingly using secondaries for portfolio management, price discovery, and capital allocation decisions. Together, they explore why liquidity solutions are expanding across private markets, what current pricing trends reveal about investor sentiment, and how specialized buyers are reshaping the market.   

Hibri explains that secondary pricing is often more efficient than investors assume, and private credit is continuing to attract strong demand despite negative headlines. Platforms like Tangible Markets are an increasingly significant tool for price discovery — at this point, nearly 40% of investors who ex...

Could the best way to invest in AI actually be the boring one?

Mike Dorrell, Chairman & CEO of Stonepeak, joins Sonali Basak to discuss why the firm prefers investing in the infrastructure behind AI rather than the technology itself. Together, they explore the surge in data center demand, why power has become one of the industry's biggest constraints, and where infrastructure investors are finding opportunity across digital, energy, and transportation.  

Dorrell explains why digital infrastructure has become one of the market's hottest trades, and where he sees pockets of overvaluation, why the...

What happens when AI changes work faster than businesses can adapt?

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with Ronnie Chatterji, Chief Economist at OpenAI, to discuss how AI is reshaping the workforce, why jobs may be changing faster than they're disappearing, and what it will take for workers and companies to keep up. Together, they explore the rise of AI agents, the growing gap between AI leaders and laggards, and whether AI can become a meaningful driver of economic growth.

Chatterji explains why retraining may matter more than automation, why human judgment...

What happens when AI changes the rules of lending?

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with David Manlowe, CEO of Benefit Street Partners, to discuss why private credit may be moving beyond its golden age of broad outperformance and into a period where manager selection is increasingly critical.

Manlowe explains how AI is reshaping credit markets, why software exposure has become one of the biggest differentiators among private credit managers, and why the refinancing wave beginning in 2027 could become a defining test for loans originated during the market bo...

What happens when strong performance starts to look a little too easy?

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with Greg Bond, Chief Investment Officer of Man Group, to discuss what is driving the strength of quantitative hedge funds, where hidden risks may be building, and how AI is changing the way investors conduct research and prepare for market shocks.

Bond explains why investors should look beyond headline returns and pay closer attention to the unexpected connections emerging across investment strategies and multi-strategy platforms. He also shares how AI is transforming research, uncovering...

Private credit is facing a reset. But could that create the best opportunities in years?

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, speaks with Mathieu Chabran, co-Founder of Tikehau Capital, about the recent volatility in private credit and why he believes the asset class is entering a healthier, more disciplined phase.

While some investors have focused on redemption pressures and market dislocations, Chabran argues the market is simply repricing risk after years of abundant liquidity. He believes stronger underwriting, better alignment of interests, and a renewed focus on credit fundamentals are cr...

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, speaks with Al Rabil, CEO of Kayne Anderson, about why today’s real estate market may be far more dislocated than it appears.

While the broader economy looks stable, Rabil explains how rapid rate hikes and peak-era pricing created a meaningful reset across real estate. He argues that the opportunity exists in part because investors are not acting. Many remain anchored to recent losses, even as valuations adjust and fundamentals begin to shift.

The conversation also explores the structural forces shaping the market, including stro...

What’s actually breaking in private credit—and what isn’t?

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, is joined by Vivek Bantwal, Co‑Head of Private Credit at Goldman Sachs, to unpack a market where selectivity is returning. Bantwal explains why this moment is revealing a clear divide—between strong and weak borrowers, and between managers who underwrote for downside risk and those who didn’t.

The conversation moves from there into what’s behind recent volatility. Bantwal separates technical pressures from fundamentals and explains how redemptions and capital flows are stress-testing the market in real time...

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, is joined by Jason Thomas, Head of Global Research & Investment Strategy at Carlyle, to discuss how more value is being created before companies ever reach the public markets, and why that shift is changing how investors access growth. As private capital has expanded across the lifecycle of companies, Thomas explains why there are now significantly more privately backed firms than public ones, and why a growing share of lifetime returns is realized prior to IPO.

The conversation moves from there into the forces reshaping portfolio construction. Thomas outlines how passive...

Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with Cliff Asness, Co-Founder AQR Capital Management, to discuss why today's "expensive" and "bubble" are not the same thing, and why the difference matters more than most investors think. With pockets of froth across today's market, Asness explains why he sets a deliberately high bar before calling a bubble, and why profiting from a bubble you correctly identify is far harder than it looks.

The conversation moves from there into the mechanics of staying disciplined when markets get extreme. Asness makes the case that quantitative investing is an...

In this episode of The Bridge, Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with David Breach, President of Vista Equity Partners, to discuss why AI is rewriting the rules of software economics. Breach explains how AI is pushing the long-standing Rule of 40 toward a new bar closer to a Rule of 60 or 70, resetting valuations and raising expectations for what a high-quality software company actually looks like. As he sees it, the so-called "SaaS apocalypse" missed the point. AI isn't displacing software, it's structurally lifting both growth and margins at once.

The conversation also e...

In this episode of The Bridge, Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with Steve Tananbaum, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of GoldenTree Asset Management, to discuss why today's software correction may be only halfway complete, how a structurally complex credit environment is creating selective opportunities for disciplined investors, and why this moment calls for valuation and downside protection rather than predictions about where the market is headed.

The conversation also covers how AI is emerging as both a source of opportunity and a structural risk for software business models, why dispersion rather t...

In this episode of The Bridge, Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with Jack Weingart, Chief Financial Officer of TPG, to discuss why the 2026 IPO surge is an anomaly rather than a trend, how the most significant value creation is increasingly happening in private markets before companies ever go public, and why today's IPO moment is masking a deeper structural shift that Weingart says is unlike anything the market has seen in decades.

The conversation also covers how private credit is mirroring private equity's structural evolution, why AI is emerging as the p...

In this episode of The Bridge, Sonali Basak sits down with Victor Khosla, Founder & CIO of Strategic Value Partners, to discuss why "private credit" has become too broad a term to be meaningful, how opportunistic credit has evolved from distressed paper trading to actively owning and operating real assets, and why today's credit environment is unlike anything Khosla says he has seen in decades.

The conversation also covers the structural stress building across high yield, leveraged loans, and private credit markets, why software is emerging as the biggest fault line for private equity and credit portfolios, and...

In this episode of The Bridge by iCapital, Rob Sechan, Co-Founder of NewEdge Capital, joins our Chief Investment Strategist Sonali Basak to unpack why AI concentration in markets is more justified than it looks, and why the investors who get it wrong are often watching the wrong risks entirely.

From the arms race driving AI infrastructure spending to the disciplines that separate durable portfolios from reactive ones, Sechan offers a grounded framework for navigating elevated valuations alongside constant macro noise. He makes the case that quality, diversification, and opportunistic allocation still win across cycles, and that the...

In this episode of The Bridge by iCapital, John Waldron, President & COO of Goldman Sachs, joins Soali Basak to unpack why the economy is stronger than it looks, where AI fits into the growth picture, and why the next major opportunity in private markets may be closer than investors think.

From persistent inflation and elevated rates to the structural shift toward private credit and the evolution of capital markets, Waldron offers a grounded, cautiously constructive view of where we are, and what it will take for AI to deliver the growth the market is pricing in.

In this episode of The Bridge by iCapital, Sadek Wahba, Founder and Chairman of I Squared Capital, breaks down how investing in essential, hard assets—from airports and water systems to power generation, fiber, and data centers—can play a critical role in portfolio construction.

He explores:

- Why infrastructure can offer long‑duration, inflation‑linked cash flows

- What digital infrastructure really includes — beyond just data centers - How diversification across sectors and regions helps manage risk

- Why the U.S. has underinvested in infrastructure for decades

- How public‑priva...

The Bridge gives listeners a seat at the table with the leaders shaping what comes next. Hosted by Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, each episode connects investing intelligence with the decisions and strategies shaping the markets.

In this episode of The Bridge by iCapital, Deven Parekh, Managing Partner at Insight Partners, joins host Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, to unpack how AI is reshaping software investing — and why the next phase won’t be defined by hype, but by execution, durable moats, and who can adapt at speed.

They also explore why “AI vs. non‑AI” is becoming a false distinction, how markets over‑rotate on software sentiment, and what typically stops a runaway cycle: a meaningful miss that shifts demand expectations, tightens capital, and resets valuations.

In this episode of The Bridge by iCapital, host Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, sits down with Nouriel Roubini, Senior Economic Strategist at Hudson Bay, to reassess the long‑term outlook for the global economy, and why he believes the coming decade could be defined by the most powerful wave of innovation in human history.

The conversation also tackles the near‑term crosscurrents: geopolitical shocks, fiscal and monetary tension, labor disruption, and inflation anxiety. While these pressures may create short‑term volatility, Roubini argues they remain second‑order compared to the secular tailwind of technology reshapin...

In this episode of The Bridge by iCapital, Fortress Co‑CEO Jack Neumark joins Sonali Basak, Chief Investment Strategist at iCapital, to unpack how private credit is changing, where risk is commonly misunderstood, and why structure, underwriting, and downside protection matter more than ever.

From asset‑backed lending and real estate credit to the shifting role of banks and the return of lender leverage, Neumark offers a grounded view of where opportunity is emerging, and how disciplined investors are positioning for durability across cycles.