MSCI Launches AI Value-Chain Indexes Across 10 Market Components
The framework separates physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure and applications to help institutional investors assess companies’ roles in the artificial-intelligence economy.
MSCI has launched an index framework that divides artificial-intelligence exposure into three layers and 10 components, giving institutional investors a way to distinguish companies by their role in the AI value chain.
The MSCI ACWI IMI AI Value Chain Indexes cover physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure and applications. Their components include hardware, data-center infrastructure, energy providers, cloud compute, data infrastructure, model development, model training, deployment and operations, physical applications, and software applications.
The indexes track each layer and component separately. MSCI evaluates companies using segment revenue and attention from company news, with each company’s AI-value-chain score reflecting its highest exposure among the 10 components.
The framework comes after sharply different performance across AI-related equities. During the five weeks ending July 28, 2026, hardware had gained about 106% through June 22 before falling about 20% by July 28. Data-center infrastructure had gained about 92% before declining about 15% over the same period, while software applications rose about 11%.
The figures represent gross returns in U.S. dollars for the MSCI AI Value Chain Indexes. The beta-factor crowding z-score stood at 1.5 standard deviations at the end of June, indicating elevated positioning concentration.
Traditional sector classifications can place chipmakers, cloud providers, data-center operators, energy companies and software firms in separate sectors even when they are exposed to the same investment cycle. The new framework groups those businesses according to their position in that cycle.
A July 10, 2026, analysis using data through May found that Taiwan and the Netherlands had the highest overall AI-value-chain scores in the global-market assessment, ahead of the U.S.
The indexes are designed as analytical and portfolio-construction tools. MSCI’s framework gives investors a way to examine AI exposure across infrastructure and applications rather than treating the sector as a single category.
