July 17, 2026

Owning It on Purpose

A companion to “The Concentration You Cannot See”. Having seen how much of a typical portfolio quietly leans on artificial intelligence, the question becomes how to hold that exposure deliberately, and across the whole of the theme rather than only its crowded peak.

A BCM Investment Insight, by Ewen Emmerson

In a recent piece, “The Concentration You Cannot See“, we made a simple argument: a portfolio can look well spread across shares, bonds and other assets and still lean, underneath, on a single outcome, the success of the artificial-intelligence build-out. We ended by saying that seeing this is the first step, and that shaping how the exposure is held is the real work. This piece is about that work.

The starting point is worth repeating, because it is easily misread. The response to hidden concentration is not to sell out of the theme. Artificial intelligence is a genuine and powerful development, the companies leading it are for the most part profitable and well financed, and no investor in today’s market is free of the theme in any case. The problem is not that a portfolio owns artificial intelligence. It is that it often owns it in the single most concentrated shape the market can offer, inherited by default from the way index funds are built, rather than chosen. The task is to change the shape, not to abandon the theme.

The lesson of past technology waves

History offers a useful and slightly uncomfortable lesson here. In wave after wave of transformational technology, the companies that captured the most attention, and the most capital, at the peak of the excitement were frequently not the ones that captured the durable rewards.

The businesses that built the plumbing of the early internet, the makers of the network equipment and the hardware, were the celebrated names of their day. Most did not go on to be the long-run winners. The durable rewards flowed instead to two other groups: the businesses that used the new technology to build a lasting advantage, the retailers, logistics operators and service companies that quietly reorganised themselves around it; and, separately, the small number of suppliers of the genuinely scarce components that everyone else needed.

The reason is not mysterious. Where a technology is abundant and can be reproduced, competition drives its price down, and with it the profits of the companies that supply it. Where something stays scarce and hard to replicate, whether a specialised input or a strong market position built on top of the technology, value tends to persist. The crowd, understandably, gathers around the most visible producers at the top. That is often the part of the chain where expectations are highest, and where competition is most likely, over time, to erode the very returns being priced in.

The whole value chain

This is why we think about the artificial-intelligence theme as a chain, not a name.

At one end sit the enablers: the designers of the most advanced chips, the handful of firms that can actually manufacture them, the specialist equipment makers, and, increasingly, the power generation, grid and physical infrastructure that the build-out consumes. Some of this is where genuine scarcity, and therefore durable pricing power, currently lives.

In the middle sit the model builders and the largest platforms, the celebrated few. These are formidable companies, but they are also where the market’s enthusiasm is most concentrated, and where the hidden concentration described in our first piece actually sits.

At the far end, and much the largest group, sit the users: the enormous universe of ordinary businesses, across banking, healthcare, retail, industry and services, that will use artificial intelligence to lower their costs or strengthen their position. Most of these are not thought of as technology companies at all. That is precisely why exposure to them is not handed to you automatically by an index, and has to be chosen.

Holding the theme deliberately means holding across this chain, with an eye to where value is likely to settle, rather than piling into the peak simply because that is what the market’s construction hands you.

Why this is active work

None of this happens by accident. A portfolio that simply tracks the market will, by design, give you the theme in its most concentrated form, weighted towards the largest and most talked-about names, because that is what those indices have become. Shaping the exposure differently, spreading it across the value chain, leaning towards scarcity and durable advantage, and sizing the whole as a deliberate position, requires active choices. This is where thoughtful portfolio construction earns its keep, and it is hard to do if you have not first seen the concentration clearly.

It also requires a sense of proportion. Deliberate does not mean large. For some investors the right amount of considered artificial-intelligence exposure is more than they inherited; for others, once the hidden overlap is counted, it is less. The point is that the size and the shape are chosen to fit the individual, not absorbed unexamined from the market.

Holding it deliberately

The through-line of both pieces is the same. The build-out is real and worth being invested in; the danger is not the theme but the unexamined, concentrated form in which most portfolios come to hold it. The response is not to predict when the enthusiasm will cool, which is a fool’s errand, but to hold the exposure on purpose: broadly, across the chain, sized to the person, and understood.

That is work we do holding by holding, around each client’s own circumstances. If you would like us to look at how the artificial-intelligence theme runs through your portfolio, and whether its shape is one you have chosen or one you have inherited, we would be glad to talk.

This article is for information only and does not constitute personal advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security, fund or index. The value of investments can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a guide to future returns. If you are unsure as to the suitability of any investment, please seek advice that takes your personal circumstances into account.