Spår reduserte AI-investeringer

A Bloomberg analyst has attempted to quantify the impact of Democratic gains in Tuesday's midterm elections on projected AI investments. The election could result in a reduction of around 5-7 percent in AI-related investment in infrastructure by 2027, from an estimated $1.4 trillion. This reduction includes investments in data centers, network equipment, land, and other materials needed for building data centers, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh.

The reduction might indicate a downward adjustment, but the investment wave will still be the largest in history relative to the size of the economy, said Christian Lie, chief strategist at Formue. Around 40 percent of planned data center capacity in the U.S. is located in states where Democratic governors have signaled intentions to pause or halt construction.

New Democratic governors in Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, and Texas campaigned on pledges to stop or at least pause data center development throughout their states. Democratic governors-elect in New York and Oregon have vowed to extend building restrictions already in place. The outcomes in Alaska and Kansas are still pending, but their gubernatorial candidates have expressed a temporary ban on new data center establishments.

These investment cuts, combined with an expected slowdown in the approval tempo for new data centers, could result in up to 10 gigawatts of data center capacity not going online next year as planned, according to Bloomberg analyst Singh. "We've gone from wondering who will introduce the pause to questioning how feasible it is to build such a data center at all," said Justin Teresi, another Bloomberg analyst.

Teresi describes Tuesday's midterms in the U.S. as "not a very good night if you're in data center development." Democratic gains in the U.S. election have triggered a major stock market decline worldwide. Formue strategist Christian Lie believes that while Thursday's fall may seem alarming, it could have a positive side: "It may help prevent the bubble from bursting even harder."

Lie notes that the current stock market decline is clearer than the one seen during the IT bubble in 2000. "Even the largest companies in the world still make a lot of money, and they don't have so much debt that they will have to bail out of this," Lie said.