By Nick Farrell
Publication Date: 2025-12-05 09:18:00
Arvind Krishna tears into Big Tech’s data centre maths
IBM lead suit Arvind Krishna has warned that hyperscalers like Google and Amazon are shovelling cash into data centres at a rate that will never turn a profit.
Krishna, who has run Biggish Blue since 2020, told the Decoder podcast that even a basic calculation shows “no way” these mega investments make financial sense. He said data centres gobble energy and capital in absurd quantities.
Goldman Sachs reckons global data centre power use sits at about 55 gigawatts, with only 14 per cent devoted to AI. Its analysts say demand could hit 84 gigawatts by 2027.
Krishna said a single gigawatt-scale data centre costs roughly $80 billion to build in today’s money. If one company promised 20 to 30 gigawatts, it would face about $1.5 trillion in capital spend, a sum he compared to Tesla’s market value.
He estimated that all hyperscalers together might dream of adding 100 gigawatts although that still needs about $8…
