Pension funds pulled back from US stocks over AI risk, FT reported in December
UK schemes managing more than £200bn shifted money away from US equities late last year, with one fund citing AI valuations as the reason
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UK pension funds managing more than £200bn moved money out of US equities toward other regions or into downside protection, the Financial Times reported in December 2025.
Aon Master Trust, a £12bn scheme with 185,000 members, sold about 10% of its global equity portfolio, roughly £700mn, over the summer of 2025, much of it US holdings, according to that report. Standard Life's Callum Stewart said at the time that his fund was cutting its US allocation and adding exposure to UK and Asian markets instead.
Concern about concentration in AI-linked stocks has persisted since. In a report dated September 2026, Bloomberg said New York City Retirement Systems chief investment officer Monte Tabak turned down a private equity proposal after judging its share of AI-related assets too high. The same report cited a Goldman Sachs estimate that AI infrastructure companies, including chipmakers and hyperscalers, make up about 40% of the S&P 500's market value.
The pattern marks a shift from the financial engineering already seen in big tech's efforts to keep AI exposure off balance sheets, suggesting institutional investors are growing wary of how AI spending commitments are structured rather than reassured by them. It follows a string of ever-larger AI funding rounds, including OpenAI's reported $1.2 trillion valuation talks, that have stretched the gap between capital committed to AI and the returns so far visible. If large, long-horizon allocators keep rotating away from concentrated US tech exposure, the effect could weigh disproportionately on the mega-cap technology and AI-linked names that have driven index gains, since these funds tend to act on multi-year horizons rather than short-term sentiment.