The AI investment story is increasingly shifting from who builds the technology to who supplies the enormous amounts of power needed to run it. That is the thesis behind Harbor Capital Advisors’ new fund, the Munificent Seven ETF (NYSE:BBLS), which began trading last week with a concentrated bet on global energy giants.
AI’s Power Problem Creates a New ETF Trade
The timing gives the fund a fresh angle as surging AI infrastructure investment puts electricity supply and grid capacity under increasing pressure.
The International Energy Agency expects global data-center electricity consumption to roughly double from 2025 levels to about 950 terawatt-hours by 2030, with AI-focused data centers growing even faster. In the U.S., data centers are expected to account for roughly half of electricity demand growth through 2030.
EPRI’s latest projections are even wider, estimating that U.S. data centers could consume 9% to 17% of the country’s electricity by 2030, up from about 4%- 5% today.
BBLS Targets the Energy Suppliers
That backdrop is what Harbor is targeting with BBLS.
The actively managed ETF focuses on seven large-cap energy companies: ExxonMobil Holdings Corporation (NYSE:XOM), Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), Shell plc (NYSE:SHEL), TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE), BP plc (NYSE:BP) and Equinor (NYSE:EQNR). Harbor calls them the "Munificent Seven," a play on the Magnificent Seven technology stocks and on the companies’ historically strong free cash flow generation and capital returns.
BBLS carries a 0.32% expense ratio.
From AI Builders to AI Infrastructure
Harbor President and CIO Kristof Gleich argues that AI is becoming an industrial economy as much as a digital one.
That shifts the investment question beyond semiconductor makers, hyperscalers and software companies toward the businesses supplying the electricity, natural gas and physical infrastructure needed to expand AI capacity.
The IEA projects renewables and natural gas to lead the increase in electricity supply for data centers through 2030, while nuclear power is also expected to become increasingly important.
A Different Way to Play the AI Boom
BBLS complements Harbor’s existing AI Lab Ecosystem ETF suite, which targets companies and technologies developing next-generation AI.
The new fund instead targets what Harbor sees as another layer of the AI value chain: the energy required to make artificial intelligence scalable.
For investors already heavily exposed to Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA), hyperscalers and other AI technology names, BBLS offers a different way to position for the sector’s next phase, by betting on the companies powering the AI buildout rather than building the models themselves.
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