Goldman Sachs has cautioned that America’s energy sector is facing a ‘big trouble’ not only from the power supply constraints but also from the looming labour shortage. According to a report by Fortune, the investment bank’s latest report estimates that the US power and grid value chain will require around 500,000 additional workers by 2030 to meet demand. With roles often requiring three to four years of training, the sector faces a significant skills gap. The report also highlights that the energy apprenticeship pipeline had just 45,000 entrants in 2024, which is far short of the 65,000 professionals needed annually to close the labor supply gap. Rising demand for AI infrastructure, which requires even greater power capacity, could widen the shortage further. Goldman Sachs noted: “Power is a critical bottleneck—but increasingly, the requisite labor presents a structural constraint of its own.”
Goldman Sachs points to humanoid robots and autonomous equipment
Goldman Sachs believes that as the workforce is not able to keep pace, the companies would require humanoids and other autonomous equipements as the potential solution. The firm also believes that the humanoid robot market will witness growth and will reach 1.4 million by 2035 increasing from 20,000 in 2025. This decrease in the human workforce will offer 6,900% increase to the humanoid market. Companies such as Tesla, Amazon, and Caterpillar are already deploying autonomous systems, while China has begun using robots for power grid inspection and maintenance.
Goldman Sachs is ‘very impressed’ with Microsoft
Recently, Microsoft offered Wall Street its clearest signal yet that its massive capital commitments to artificial intelligence are yielding tangible, diversified revenue streams. The performance sparked a historic rally in the software giant’s equity, driving its sharpest single-day gain in nearly 18 years. The catalyst came as Microsoft reported its fastest acceleration in cloud revenue since 2022. The results demonstrated that its core Azure infrastructure and enterprise AI offerings are expanding rapidly among corporate clients, while management simultaneously signaled a moderation in capital expenditure growth—addressing a key area of investor anxiety over margin compression.In an interview on Bloomberg Television, Goldman Sachs Group managing director and senior equity research analyst Gabriela Borges highlighted the shift in market sentiment. “You’re seeing more breadcrumbs around Microsoft’s ability to pull varying levers on the monetization side that perhaps were not nearly as obvious as before,” Borges said. Following the quarterly report, Borges reiterated her Buy rating on Microsoft while raising her 12-month price target nearly 5% to $640, implying a potential upside of approximately 64% from Wednesday’s closing price. During intraday trading in New York on Thursday, Microsoft shares surged 17% to $457 — positioning the company for its largest single-day percentage gain since October 2008.At the earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company now counted more than 30 million paid users of Microsoft 365 Copilot, the AI assistant sold as an add-on to the ubiquitous Office software. That’s up from roughly 20 million three months earlier.
