NEW YORK: Global data centre spending is set to reach US$31.6 trillion through 2050 to meet the world’s growing appetite for artificial intelligence (AI), an investment boom with no precedent in history, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC).
Dwarfing projects such as the railways, Internet and electrification, spending on data centres could even hit US$50 trillion over the next two and a half decades if AI adoption accelerates beyond PwC’s “central scenario” forecast, the firm said in a report yesterday.
For comparison: the United States gross domestic product is roughly US$30 trillion.
With consumers, companies and governments increasingly using AI, tech giants like Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc and smaller data centre providers are setting up new computing facilities across the planet at a rapid clip.
The bulk of the spending will go into what fills the data centres, hardware from companies such as global AI chip leader Nvidia Corp.
At the same time, the tech industry is trying to blunt a backlash against data centres that threatens to slow down the buildout.
At least 75 projects, worth about US$130bil combined, were blocked or delayed by local opposition during the first three months of this year, according to research group Data Centre Watch.
Protesters cite concerns about environmental impact, resource consumption and more broadly how AI could upend employment and society.
The US will capture nearly half the projected data centre spending, at US$15.1 trillion, PwC said.
The Asia-Pacific region will follow at US$8.2 trillion, Europe at US$5.6 trillion, the Middle East at US$1.1 trillion and Africa at US$255bil of the cumulative capital expenditure, according to PwC’s inaugural Global Data Centre Outlook.
Spending will keep rising through mid-century as graphics processing units, servers, storage systems, networking equipment and other hardware will require routine replacement.
Recurring chip upgrades, the computational power, and not land or construction, will account for most of the investment, quite unlike traditional capital expenditure cycles like prior generations of memory chip production or the global fiber internet rollout, which “front loaded” investments, taking on costs and risks upfront.
“Railways. Electrification. The Internet. Each required enormous amounts of capital and defined an era,” the researchers said in the report.
“The AI infrastructure cycle underway dwarfs all three. This one resets every four to six years, and shows no signs of ending.”
On an annual basis, global data centre spending will increase from about US$800bil this year to US$1.1 trillion in 2030 and US$1.8 trillion in 2050, PwC predicted.
China and India will drive the largest share of incremental demand, supported by large populations, rapidly expanding digital economies, and substantial headroom for AI to embed in business and consumer activity.
PwC commissioned Oxford Economics Ltd to model data centre capital expenditure, with the report covering 46 countries and territories, and five regions, which account for the bulk of global economic activity and digital infrastructure investment.
While global demand is strong, factors such as power availability, data sovereignty requirements and the flow of semiconductors will determine which regions capture the investments, PwC said.
Power will be the foremost factor that shapes where AI infrastructure investment occurs.
Indeed, much of the forecast hinges on how fast reliable electricity supply for data centres can be established, according to the report.
Affordable, reliable, and increasingly low-carbon electricity at scale is the hardest requirement for many markets to meet.
And while the researchers’ projection assumed a fairly open trading system where chips move freely across borders, disruptions in semiconductor supply chains could cut global investment by nearly 20%, they said.
Meanwhile, a growing sovereignty push could redistribute, but not reduce, global investment. — Bloomberg
