I don't think it's necessarily shady, but let's say that we're assisting at bets and capex spending we've never seen in history.
Companies like Meta, Alphabet, etc that were drowning in cash flow and buying back their stock are now back at issuing shares, creating a huge number of SPVs, issuing debt, etc.
There's a gigantic spending spirale with no signs of ending. Nvidia is financing companies to buy its own hardware.
Mind you, this is nothing new in some businesses. Airbus and Boeing have been lending money to companies to buy their own airplanes forever.
But its just all too much, with very little money coming. To understand how massive is the spending: even if every adult on the planet spent 250$ on AI per year this would still not cover anywhere near what's being invested.
> even if every adult on the planet spent 250$ on AI per year this would still not cover anywhere near what's being invested.
Your math does not make sense. That's something like $1.5 trillion every year. That's no where near what is being spent in AI hardware buildouts on an annual basis.
Last year estimated spend was $380 billion and this year it's $680 billion [0] just for the big five. Given global projections through 2030 being as high as 7 trillion [1], OPs comment seems at least the right order of magnitude.
1. The estimates, for data center build outs in 2026 alone, in US alone, and even limiting just to the hyperscalers + oracle is in the 600 to 800 billions range.
And I'm ignoring the likes of Nvidia building their owns and smaller (but still huge) outside the biggest players. Or the comparably smaller, yet still multi billions spent in the rest of the world.
2. That excludes salaries, research, taxes, cost of running the datacenters themselves, etc.
In fact several estimates are pointing out that global annual spending on AI better be in the range of 3T$ range (that's almost a 1'000 $ / year per every adult in the world) or this is all going bust.
The math that does not make sense is to expect such a gargantuan spending to have any meaningful monetary return.
I don't necessarily know what the parent was referring to, but I can see two this:
Megacorps often get significant tax breaks to build AI in a community.
Megacorps advertise that datacenters will create jobs but don't mention that most of those jobs will disappear once construction is finished.
I don't think it's necessarily shady, but let's say that we're assisting at bets and capex spending we've never seen in history.
Companies like Meta, Alphabet, etc that were drowning in cash flow and buying back their stock are now back at issuing shares, creating a huge number of SPVs, issuing debt, etc.
There's a gigantic spending spirale with no signs of ending. Nvidia is financing companies to buy its own hardware.
Mind you, this is nothing new in some businesses. Airbus and Boeing have been lending money to companies to buy their own airplanes forever.
But its just all too much, with very little money coming. To understand how massive is the spending: even if every adult on the planet spent 250$ on AI per year this would still not cover anywhere near what's being invested.
> even if every adult on the planet spent 250$ on AI per year this would still not cover anywhere near what's being invested.
Your math does not make sense. That's something like $1.5 trillion every year. That's no where near what is being spent in AI hardware buildouts on an annual basis.
Last year estimated spend was $380 billion and this year it's $680 billion [0] just for the big five. Given global projections through 2030 being as high as 7 trillion [1], OPs comment seems at least the right order of magnitude.
[0]: https://futurumgroup.com/insights/ai-capex-2026-the-690b-inf...
[1]: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-tel...
1. The estimates, for data center build outs in 2026 alone, in US alone, and even limiting just to the hyperscalers + oracle is in the 600 to 800 billions range.
And I'm ignoring the likes of Nvidia building their owns and smaller (but still huge) outside the biggest players. Or the comparably smaller, yet still multi billions spent in the rest of the world.
2. That excludes salaries, research, taxes, cost of running the datacenters themselves, etc.
In fact several estimates are pointing out that global annual spending on AI better be in the range of 3T$ range (that's almost a 1'000 $ / year per every adult in the world) or this is all going bust.
The math that does not make sense is to expect such a gargantuan spending to have any meaningful monetary return.
Gartner estimates that 2026 will have about $2.5 trillion in AI investments, with 2027 reaching over $3 trillion.
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-1...
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