By Casey B. Renner
Publication Date: 2025-12-13 02:01:00
Artificial intelligence companies are pouring extraordinary sums into massive data centers. One estimate now puts a 100-gigawatt artificial general intelligence effort at about $8 trillion.
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) CEO Arvind Krishna recently told the “Decoder” podcast. He said filling a 1-gigawatt data center costs about $80 billion and called it “today’s number.”
Krishna said a company committing 20–30 gigawatts could face about $1.5 trillion in spending using current costs, telling “Decoder” host Nilay Patel that the estimate reflects announced AI infrastructure plans. Krishna also described the short lifespan of AI chips and said the hardware needs to be used within about five years before being replaced.
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Krishna said an $8 trillion investment would require about $800 billion in profit to cover interest payments alone. Patel referenced comments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has said OpenAI could generate a return on…
