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Mirova Highlights Tech Investment Opportunities, Risks In 2026
Amanda Cheesley
26 January 2026
At a London media event last week, attended by WealthBriefing, Karen Kharmandarian, head of thematic equities at Paris-headquartered to £50 billion, and needs access to land, energy and water. They are being developed in Ireland and Germany, in particular. TSMC, for instance, is building a new plant in Germany,” Kharmandarian said. He also mentioned that every day Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) plant consumes 28 million litres of water to produce chips for Nvidia. Hervé Guez, global head of listed assets at Mirova, emphasised how AI, the energy transition and geopolitical fragmentation will shape the world to come. “These forces, which will guide capital flows for years ahead, require sharper analytical capabilities and an investment platform able to capture their industrial, social and environmental implications,” Guez said. “Mirova and Thematics AM are building a thematic platform that is better equipped to seize long-term opportunities while integrating environmental and social considerations at the heart of investment decision-making.” (Mirova bolstered its thematic platform by absorbing Thematics Asset Managementand Thematics in May 2025.) Sustainability “In a fragmented technologically-accelerated and environmentally-constrained world, sustainability is not a nice to have: it is a condition for economic resilience,” she said. “This is the role of shareholder engagement: shedding light on these shifts, managing emerging risks and supporting companies so that their transition pathways are credible, coherent and genuinely conducive to sustainable performance.” Defence Although sustainability has been pushed down the agenda, Guez said that the firms they invest in will be resilient and need to embrace long-term sustainability risks.
“Sustainability is a prerequisite for economic resilience,” Louise Schreiber, co-head of sustainability research – listed assets at Mirova, continued. “We select firms based on their sustainable practices and help them to navigate the new risks. It’s important to align AI to a sustainable future.”
After Germany and the EU hiked defence spending, the relation between defence stocks and ESG-focused portfolios and how they can sit together has also become a discussion point. Defence is critical and Kharmandarian said it is an area that they are investigating. But with Mirova only having funds covered by Article 9 under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), they do not yet hold defence stocks in their portfolios. “However, there are many other ways to support this theme indirectly, such as critical cybersecurity,” Schreiber added. See more about defence and ESG investing here.