ASX AI shares spent much of 2026 out of favour, but the tone has shifted in recent weeks.
Strong results from the US hyperscalers have reminded investors that the spending cycle is still running hard.
That capital has to land somewhere physical, and a good deal of it lands here.
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Why ASX AI shares are back in favour
The Australian market has limited direct exposure to AI chipmakers or model developers.
But what it does have is infrastructure.
Data centres need land, grid connections, buildings, cooling and networking. Each of those is a bottleneck, and bottlenecks should allow ASX AI shares to benefit from increased pricing power.
NextDC: the purest of the ASX AI shares
NextDC Ltd (ASX: NXT) is the closest thing on the ASX to a direct bet on AI infrastructure demand.
The company recently reported that pro forma contracted utilisation rose 11% to 740 megawatts.
What's more, UBS has a price target of $22.55 on the stock, against a recent price of $14.03.
Recent earnings give a sense of the scale involved.
NextDC maintained FY26 net revenue guidance of $390 million to $400 million and underlying EBITDA guidance of $230 million to $240 million. Contracted EBITDA from existing utilisation and the forward order book is expected to exceed $1 billion, more than four times that FY26 EBITDA guidance.
The catch is capital.
NextDC is carrying roughly $5 billion of forecast FY27 capital expenditure.
How the company executes on its CapEx plans will be a determining factor in the success of its share price.
Goodman Group: land, power and scale
Goodman Group (ASX: GMG) plays a different role in the same story.
Data centres now account for 73% of its development pipeline, which was on track to reach $18 billion by June 2026.
Its real edge is a secured power bank of 6.4 gigawatts across 16 cities.
Grid access has become the primary constraint on data centre expansion worldwide.
Goodman assembled that position over years, and a newcomer cannot replicate Goodman's position quickly.
Morgans has a buy rating on Goodman shares with a $36 price target.
The trade-off is that Goodman carries heavy development commitments and, like any asset-heavy business, is sensitive to interest rate movements.
Megaport: the connectivity layer
Megaport Ltd (ASX: MP1) sits between the other two.
The company provides the software-defined networking that connects enterprise customers to cloud platforms and data centres.
First-half FY26 revenue rose 26% to $134.9 million at a 72% gross margin. Operating earnings also grew 28% to $35.3 million, and net revenue retention came in at 111%.
Megaport has guided to FY26 revenue of $302 million to $317 million with an EBITDA margin of 21% to 24%.
The company connects roughly 3,000 enterprise customers to more than 1,000 data centres globally, which gives it a distribution footprint that would be slow and expensive for a competitor to rebuild from scratch.
In order for investors to validate the Megaport investment thesis, they will have to wait until full-year results are published on 20 August.
Foolish takeaway
These three ASX AI shares are exposed to the same underlying trend, but in very different ways.
NextDC offers the most direct leverage and carries the most capital risk.
Goodman offers scarcity and scale with a lower risk profile.
Megaport offers software margins on a much smaller base.
The obvious danger for all three is that global hyperscalers eventually decide the returns do not justify the capital outlay, and the market's patience with that spending has already proven fickle.
For now, though, the money is still being committed, and Australian infrastructure is benefiting.
