- Forecasts say cloud giants set to spend $1.15 trillion on data centers by 2027
- Economists warn AI buildout risks starving other industries and distorting US GDP
- Analysts fear global data market cooling could expose unsustainable hyperscaler investments
US cloud giants are preparing an extraordinary splurge in capital spending, new industry figures have claimed.
According to a recent StockMarket.News post on X, over the two years from 2022 to 2024, hyperscalers poured $477 billion into data centers, with Morgan Stanley adding between now and 2027, this figure is set to more than double to an eye-watering $1.15 trillion.
The math shows the sheer scale of the boom - estimating global data center investment could reach $2.9 trillion through 2028, split between $1.6 trillion on chips and servers and $1.3 trillion on infrastructure such as real estate, power, and construction - which would mean more than $900 billion in 2028 alone.
A huge amount of money
For context, the entire S&P 500 combined spent about $950 billion on capital expenditures in 2024.
Data center and power-related outlays could add as much as 40 basis points to US GDP growth between 2025 and 2026, economists forecast.
Paul Kedrosky, speaking with Derek Thompson on the Plain English podcast, touched on the extraordinary concentration of spending.
“There’s a huge amount of money being deployed and it’s going to a very narrow set of recipients and some really small geographies, like Northern Virginia. So it’s an incredibly concentrated pool of capital that’s also large enough to affect GDP,” he said.
He calculated in the first half of 2025, data center spending likely accounted for half of GDP growth.
Kedrosky also drew parallels with the 1990s, when massive capital poured into telecoms at the expense of other sectors.
He warned that AI infrastructure may have a similar crowding-out effect, starving other industries of investment.
A number of analysts have cautioned that the AI investment boom is unlikely to last indefinitely.
If the global data market cools, the combination of record capex, concentrated capital flows, and weaker consumer demand could trigger a very serious adjustment.
Sectors that have been crowded out by AI infrastructure could face long-term damage, while hyperscalers themselves may struggle to justify outlays on such a massive scale.
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