The AI boom is nearly $5 trillion short of paying for itself, Gartner says
Source: Fortune ·
Data centers need to generate a cumulative $8.5 trillion in revenue through 2030. Gartner says no more than $3.6 trillion will flow back.
From the source
There isn’t an endless stream of revenue for AI as early adopters once thought. The gap between what’s being spent on the AI buildout and the revenue projected to come back is turning into a multitrillion-dollar chasm. Data-center owners need to generate $8.5 trillion in cumulative revenue by the end of the decade to justify their investments, according to a press release last week by global research and advisory firm Gartner. But the firm forecasts that no more than $3.6 trillion of enterprise and consumer AI revenue can be attributed to those data centers over the same period—leaving a $4.9 trillion gap. According to a 2026 market study by trade association BOMA, data centers accounted for approximately $41.2 billion—or nearly 46%—of private office construction in the country in 2025. A decade earlier, data centers only represented less than 5%. Gartner warns that more than $3.5 trillion of AI infrastructure spending could be exposed to impairment—meaning it would have to be…