It already ranks among the biggest investment booms in modern history. This year America’s large tech firms will spend nearly $400bn on the infrastructure needed to run artificial-intelligence (ai) models. OpenAI and Anthropic, the world’s leading model-makers, are raising billions every few months; their combined valuation is approaching half a trillion dollars. Analysts reckon that by the end of 2028 the sums spent worldwide on data centres will exceed $3trn.
Investors always flock to promising technologies, but the AI rush is more extreme than many past booms. Boosters say that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—models that are better than the average human at most cognitive tasks—could be only a few years away.
The first firm to achieve it could reap unimaginable returns. Investors and innovators know they may not be backing the right model. But if they spend slowly and cautiously, they may as well not bother to spend at all.
Consequently, a relentless investment race is under way, with big tech firms splurging on the computing power needed to build the biggest models. A growing cast of extra players, from property developers to electricity generators, has been drawn in.
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