Inside the AI Infrastructure Super Cycle with EQT Infrastructure CEO Erwin Thompson

In this episode of the Dakota Live! Podcast, host Robert Morier sits down in the Philadelphia studio with Pat McHugh, Partner and Head of Investments at Constellation Wealth Capital.From his start at Casey Quirk advising asset and wealth managers to GP stakes at Wafra and leading investments at Emigrant Partners, Pat shares why he sees wealth management firms as “deeply human businesses,” where two firms can look the same on paper and still be completely unique. He also explains Constellation's differentiated approach to investments: partnering with high-quality independent firms as a minority stakeholder. By using a preferred equity structure and post-deal support designed to help leadership teams accelerate growth they are able to keep “both hands on the wheel.”Pat offers candid insights into:· Asset management vs. wealth management: why one tends toward zero-sum, short-term thinking while the other leans toward a longer, positive-sum view.· The risk in aggressive inorganic growth: why platforms that don’t integrate what they acquire may struggle to keep the clients and advisors who matter most.· Avoiding adverse selection: backing founders who keep the majority of their business.· What happens when the music stops: organic growth, aligned incentives, and a long-term view. · Lessons from playing defensive tackle at Yale: “there are no small things” to an overtime win over Army at the Yale Bowl’s 100th anniversary.Whether you’re running a wealth management firm, thinking about its next chapter, or hoping to partner with one, this conversation offers a closer look at the people and partnerships shaping where independent wealth management goes next.

Private credit has spent the past year under a microscope. There have been questions about valuations and a growing list of allocators asking where the risk is actually hiding?In today’s episode of the Dakota Live! Podcast, Robert Morier sits down with Tom Majewski, Founder and Managing Partner of Eagle Point Credit Management, to take that question head-on.In this Episode, Rob and Tom dig into a Credit Manager's outlook for the next credit cycle. How this cycle may differ from a 2008-style shock, and how the current “slow-moving flush” may play out over years, much like commercial real estate. Tom talks about where AI will and won’t change credit investing, how he hires, and why Eagle Point invests its own capital in a strategy before offering it to clients.Eagle Point, a specialist credit manager, oversees approximately $14 billion across CLOs (Collateralized Loan Obligations), portfolio debt securities, regulatory capital relief, and other specialized areas of private credit. Tom founded the firm in 2012 in partnership with Stone Point Capital. Before that, he spent more than a decade structuring credit on the sell side, working on well over one hundred CLO transactions and relaunching the CLO business at Merrill Lynch.The conversation starts in the classroom. Tom explains what an allocator is actually buying when they own CLO equity. He describes a CLO as a better-built bank: a vehicle with long-dated, match-funded, non-mark-to-market liabilities that doesn’t depend on open capital markets to survive a drawdown. He walks through what that structure meant in 2008 and March 2020, and why loan prepayments may be the most underappreciated feature of the syndicated loan market.From there, Robert and Tom move to the strategy that has become Eagle Point’s largest: portfolio debt securities. These are senior loans to other private credit funds, built on the asset coverage framework of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Tom explains how it started as a niche personal trade and grew into an institutional business, and why sitting at the top of a fund’s capital structure looks different when headlines about middle-market lending turn negative.The episode connects directly to several of our recent conversations. Tom’s account of building Eagle Point with Stone Point’s backing adds to our GP seeding and GP stakes episodes with Taproot Capital and Rosemont. His work in middle-market infrastructure credit (small-scale solar, a hydrogen-fired backup plant for Calistoga, and a domestic battery-component manufacturer) is the lending side of the AI and power buildout we covered with EQT Infrastructure.Few people have seen this market from as many angles as Tom: as an auditor, a structurer, a banker, and now a founder and allocator of capital across the credit spectrum. Whether you’re evaluating a first CLO allocation, rethinking your private credit exposure, or trying to understand what’s behind the headlines, this episode explains how the structures underneath the market really work.

In this episode of the Dakota Live! Podcast, host Robert Morier sits down in the Philadelphia studio with Matt Malone, President and Head of Investment Management at Opto Investments.From his early days as an attorney advising on alternative investments to sitting on both sides of the table at FS Investments, Matt shares how working across legal, traditional finance, and venture cultures shaped the way he evaluates investments. He also explains how Opto is working to fill the gaps RIAs face in private markets, from sourcing and due diligence to the technology and back-office support needed to run a full program.Matt offers candid insights into:•Building portfolios, not trades: why RIAs are moving from one-off private markets investments to a portfolio-first approach.•The adverse selection problem in paid distribution: why the most in-demand and niche managers often won’t pay for shelf space, and what that means for what RIAs can access.•The three S’s of due diligence (strategy, sponsor, structure) and why he tells his team, “don’t look at the deck first.”•Continuation vehicles, and why “the juice may not be worth the squeeze.”•What a well-run private markets program at an RIA looks like five years outWhether you’re building a private markets program, evaluating one, or hoping to be part of one, this conversation offers a closer look at how private markets are finding their place in private wealth portfolios.

What happens when the women just behind the industry’s senior ranks build the network they wished existed? In this special episode of the Dakota Live! Podcast, host Robert Morier heads to New York City for a roundtable with the founders of The Next Collective, a community built by and for women at the same stage of their investment careers.Joining the conversation:Jin Dingmore, Director of Investments, Baylor University Office of InvestmentsMiriam Sanders, Director of Investor Relations, Sands CapitalKatie Peykar, Partner, Torch CapitalCristina Nuñez, Co-Founder and General Partner, True Beauty VenturesOne LP and three GPs share candid insights on:The gap they saw between large senior-level gatherings and the women building their careers just behind themWhy the best networking isn’t transactional, and why “it’s depth over breadth”How a carefully curated gathering builds real trustBalancing career and family in your 30s and 40s, including a CIO’s reminder that “your 80% is going to be better than the average person’s 100%”Why relationships may matter even more as AI commoditizes parts of the jobWhether you’re an allocator, a GP, or simply building your own network, this conversation is a reminder that the strongest connections are the ones you invest in deliberately.

What happens when a firm that helped pioneer minority investing in asset managers decides to step off the private equity treadmill?In this episode of Dakota Live!, Robert Morier welcomes Brad Mook, Managing Director of Investments and Finance at Rosemont Investment Group, for a conversation about the evolution of GP stakes, the economics of owning investment management businesses, and the importance of permanent capital in building sustainable firms.Founded in 2000, Rosemont was among the early specialists making minority investments in employee-owned asset management firms. After more than 30 investments across three private equity funds, the firm changed course in 2018, partnering with Markel Corporation to invest permanent capital without a required exit.As Brad explains, that decision fundamentally changed Rosemont's investment horizon and the characteristics it looks for in a partner.The conversation traces Brad's own career from sell-side equity research to manager selection at SEI Investments and ultimately to Rosemont, where he learned an important distinction: a great investment strategy doesn't necessarily make a great business.Together, Robert and Brad explore how GP staking has evolved as more capital has entered the industry, why Rosemont remains focused on minority partnerships rather than aggregation, and the challenges of preserving employee ownership across generations.They also discuss the psychology and economics of succession planning, the importance of organic growth, and why Rosemont's portfolio has evolved from traditional asset management boutiques toward wealth management and outsourced CIO businesses.Throughout the conversation, Brad returns to a central idea: successful partnerships require patience, alignment, and a willingness to put the long-term sustainability of the business ahead of the next transaction.For emerging managers, established boutiques, and institutional investors interested in the evolution of GP stakes, this episode offers a perspective from a firm that has been investing in the industry for more than two decades.

Is a traditional background in high finance, big tech, or startups required to break into venture capital? The short answer is no. Maddi Holman is living proof of that.In today’s episode of the Dakota Live! podcast, Maddi Holman, Co-Founder of Daring Ventures and host of the Let’s Be Heard podcast, sits down with Robert Morier to discuss her unique entrance into venture capital.Daring Ventures is an NYC-based venture capital firm focused on pre-seed investing in B2B vertical SaaS and applied AI solutions. Founded in 2024 by Maddi Holman and Joseph Alalou, Daring Ventures is steered by the non-traditional paths both founders took prior to venture capital. The firm seeks out founders who take the hard route, become experts of their sector and products, and build themselves in the trenches.Robert Morier kicks off the conversation by diving into Maddi Holman’s unique background and how that’s led to success in venture capital - highlighting how beneficial a fresh perspective is in an industry that can be proliferated with monotonous “stories.”The conversation then hones in on different challenges in venture capital that revolve around one central question - what’s real and what’s not? When it comes to the founders, this is a pertinent question that venture capital firms must answer. Maddi discusses how Daring Ventures approaches this and deciphers which founders have a substantive product, have an expert understanding of their customers, have a market that can be penetrated, and have the characteristics and soft skills required to thrive in their market.Different challenges facing venture capitalists - sourcing companies, thorough evaluation, saying no, what limited partners are looking for, and the future of a venture capital firm - are explored in this episode of the Dakota Live! podcast as well.Maddi Holman also shares experiences with hosting the Let’s Be Heard podcast - a podcast focused on women’s health.Whether you’re trying to break into venture capital or are a seasoned general partner at a firm, this episode offers a unique look into how a venture capital firm operates in the modern investment landscape.

What does it take to earn a place in a portfolio when the default answer is no?For Chip Caravati and Chris Dion of Brockenbrough, selectivity is not simply a feature of manager research. It shapes the way the firm allocates capital, builds portfolios, chooses partners, and thinks about its own business.In this episode of Dakota Live!, Chip, Brockenbrough’s Chief Investment Officer, and Chris, Co-Chief Investment Officer for Institutional Investments, join Robert Morier for a wide-ranging conversation about how a deliberately small investment team makes decisions across public and private markets.The discussion begins with Brockenbrough itself: an independent Richmond investment firm whose roots date to 1970 and whose business today spans private wealth management and a discretionary OCIO platform. Chip reflects on more than three decades at the firm, while Chris discusses the lessons he carried from the University of Richmond endowment into the allocator seat.From there, the conversation gets inside the investment room.Chip and Chris explain why nearly every prospective investment begins as a “no,” how a manager demonstrates a durable right to win, and why relatively few new strategies ultimately make it into the portfolio. The result is a highly curated manager roster—but one in which relationships can endure for years once conviction has been established.They also explore an increasingly important question for allocators: where should the next dollar actually go? Rather than forcing capital into predetermined asset-class buckets, Brockenbrough compares opportunities across the portfolio—including public versus private expressions of the same investment theme—and asks managers and strategies to compete for capital.The conversation moves into lower-middle-market private equity, where Chris explains why Brockenbrough has spent years developing its network and manager-selection capabilities around smaller and earlier funds, and why manager selection can become particularly consequential in that part of the market.Chip and Chris also discuss concentration, succession, independence, the role of relationships in sourcing ideas, and how a boutique investment organization can compete in an industry increasingly defined by scale.It is a conversation about investing, but also about restraint: knowing what you own, knowing what you are looking for, and being willing to wait until something is good enough to change your mind.

What does it actually take for a private real estate manager to earn an institutional allocation?In this episode of the Dakota Live Podcast, host Robert Morier sits down with Liz Bell, Managing Director and Co-Head of Real Estate at Hamilton Lane, for an inside look at how institutional investors evaluate real estate managers, underwrite opportunities, manage risk, and make investment decisions.Liz takes us behind the investment committee doors and into the manager due diligence process—from the first pitch and track-record analysis to on-site meetings, RFPs, portfolio construction, and the final IC debate.And in today's private real estate market, the manager matters more than ever.Liz explains why Hamilton Lane increasingly looks for specialized operators with deep sector expertise, how humility and team dynamics can reveal what isn't in a pitch deck, and why understanding how a manager behaves when an investment goes wrong can be just as important as studying the investments that went right.The conversation also explores some of the biggest themes reshaping private real estate today, including AI data centers, multifamily, industrial real estate, Europe and Canada, real estate secondaries, semi-liquid structures, and the continued democratization of private markets.Robert and Liz discuss:• How institutional investors evaluate private real estate managers• What Hamilton Lane looks for in a first manager meeting• How track records are analyzed—and where the numbers don't tell the whole story• Why specialized real estate operators are increasingly attractive• The difference between underwriting primary funds, co-investments, secondaries, and other deals• How Hamilton Lane thinks about AI data centers and technology risk• Opportunities in European and Canadian real estateLiz also shares lessons from her career and explains how experiences in emerging markets shaped the way she thinks about partners, governance, liquidity, downside protection, and trust.For investment managers raising institutional capital, students pursuing careers in private markets, and allocators interested in how manager selection actually works. This episode offers a rare look inside the institutional underwriting process.

Erwin Thompson, CEO of EQT Infrastructure Company (EQIC) and 17-year EQT veteran, joins Robert Morier on Dakota Live! to break down the AI data center and power build-out, a capital expenditure wave that hyperscalers are expected to push past $4–5 trillion by 2030.Erwin explains why the U.S. is adding an estimated 15–20 gigawatts of data center demand a year against a fraction of that in new supply, why hyperscalers are now on pace to outspend the U.S. Department of Defense, and how EQT, the first infrastructure investor in data centers with EdgeConneX, is positioning across digital, energy, and environmental services.He also shares how to tell real, demand-resilient infrastructure from companies "dressed up" as infrastructure, why creativity is the job in private equity, and what the rise of evergreen vehicles means for private wealth investors looking to build a 5–20% infrastructure allocation.In this episode:– From Brooklyn to Bloomberg engineering to BlackRock, UBS, and EQT– How infrastructure investing evolved from privatizations to growth-focused operating companies– Core, core-plus, and value-add infrastructure explained– Infrastructure as an inflation hedge and where it fits between credit, real estate, and PE– The AI CapEx boom, grid capacity, and the data center power gap– Community pushback, water, and sustainability in AI data centersWhether you're an allocator sizing an infrastructure sleeve, a fundraiser positioning a strategy, or an advisor fielding questions about how to get real exposure to AI beyond public tech names, this conversation lands at a pivotal moment.Capital is flooding toward data centers and power; access is widening through evergreen vehicles, and the gap between essential, contracted infrastructure and momentum plays is getting harder to see. Erwin offers a grounded view from one of the firms that got there first, and a framework for separating durable cash flows from a hot trend before you commit capital.

Most CIO conversations happen years after a transition is finished, or years before one starts. This one happens in the middle of it.Trevor Graham was named Co-Chief Investment Officer of TIFF Investment Management in 2026 as part of a planned leadership transition alongside longtime CIO Jay Willoughby. In this episode, he walks Robert Morier through a succession plan as it unfolds in real time: why a lengthy handoff is a gift rather than a formality, what he's borrowed from watching GP succession plans succeed and fail across 15+ years of manager selection, why the goal is to keep the first principles and not "run the playbook robotically," and how the transition is creating growth opportunities for the next layer of the team, including Brad Calder, his direct report of more than a decade.TIFF was founded in 1991 by leaders at the MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations to give nonprofits below the scale of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton a fighting chance at endowment-style investing. Today the employee-owned OCIO is organized as a public benefit company and certified B Corp, and is guided by an advisory board made up largely of sitting CIOs from major endowments and foundations. Trevor explains how that board works as a sourcing network, a self-sourced reference check, and a strategic sounding board, including on the succession itself.From there, the conversation gets into how TIFF actually does the work:The three-part screen that eliminates 99% of inbound managers: a persistent competitive advantage in the investment engine, real alignment of interests, and strategic value to the portfolio (a true diversifier or an upgrade), and why Trevor refuses to be a "collector of managers"Why "no such thing as too early": TIFF has no minimum AUM or three-year track record rule and will invest with managers on day one, and how it gets paid for that business riskWhy "too big" is the more common problem, and the three reasons TIFF terminates a managerEvaluating people by what they do, not what they say: fund terms, fees relative to realistic gross excess return, and liquidity provisions as character evidenceThe two numbers that matter most in portfolio construction (equity exposure and illiquidity percentage), and why stated preferences differ from revealed preferences when markets fallWhy Trevor, once the investment committee's biggest hedge fund skeptic, changed his mind, and how TIFF caps the hedge fund book's equity beta at roughly 0.25 to 0.30Where TIFF sits on GP stakes and seeding, and why third-party ownership complicates alignmentThe AI capex boom through the lens of the dot-com era: who captures the margin, the Coke-vs-Pepsi problem with large language models, and a project that would have taken 1,000 human hours done in fiveGeneralists vs. specialists on an investment team, and why low turnover changes how people disagree with the bossWhether you're an allocator thinking about your own succession plan, an asset manager wondering what an OCIO's diligence process really looks like, or a student trying to understand the endowment model from the inside, this episode is a rare look behind the curtain.Disclaimer: Trevor Graham is the Co-Chief Investment Officer at TIFF Investment Management. All views expressed by him on this podcast are solely his opinions and do not reflect the opinions of TIFF. You should not treat any opinions expressed by Trevor as a specific endorsement to make a particular investment. References to any securities are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Any past performance discussed is not indicative of future results. Please keep in mind that investment in a fund entails a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss. Please note that the ads featured in this podcast are not endorsed by TIFF, and TIFF is not a sponsor of these ads.TIFF assets under management (AUM) is as of 4/1/26 and includes discretionary and non-discretionary client assets for which TIFF affiliates provide investment management or advisory services. The private markets portion of TIFF AUM is calculated based upon fund net asset value plus unfunded commitments. Calculation of TIFF AUM differs from the calculation of regulatory assets under management in TIFF’s Form ADV filings with the SEC and may differ from the AUM calculation methodologies used by other investment managers.This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, nor should it be used to evaluate any investment or security. It is not directed at, or intended for, any current or prospective investor in any investment vehicle sponsored by TIFF. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of TIFF as of the date hereof and are subject to change based on prevailing market and economic conditions. References to specific companies are for illustrative and educational purposes only and do not represent an endorsement or investment recommendation.