Over $3.5 Trillion of AI Infrastructure Spending Could Be Exposed to Impairment by the End of 2030: Gartner
More than $3.5 trillion of AI
infrastructure spending could be exposed to impairment by the end of 2030, if AI providers continue
their current pace of capital spending, according
to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.
“In 2026, AI providers are
expected to spend nearly $1 trillion on AI infrastructure, and are forecast to invest an additional $6
trillion between 2027 and 2030,” said Will Sommer, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner. “However, our research indicates that enterprise and consumer AI revenue
will be insufficient to support profitable returns on all planned AI capital
expenditures during this period.”
“Through 2030, AI data center
owners would need to generate a cumulative $8.5 trillion in revenue to cover
announced capital spending, financing costs, and a 12% return on invested
capital (ROIC), which we assume to be the hurdle rate of investment capital,”
said Sommer. “However, total enterprise and consumer AI revenue that can be
attributed to AI data centers during this period is forecast to reach no more
than $3.6 trillion. Because most AI-native providers operate asset-light
business models, we predict that less than half of AI revenue will be earned by
providers that own significant AI infrastructure.”
Failure to achieve sustainable ROIC on
rapidly depreciating assets would almost certainly necessitate write-downs.
Based on Gartner projections, a continued AI infrastructure investment
trajectory could leave more than $4 trillion in asset value exposed to
write-down risk through 2032. In this scenario, Gartner does not expect the 12%
ROIC to be achieved until the end of 2032 at earliest.
Neocloud
Market to Consolidate by 2030
Neoclouds will be among the most
exposed to the imbalance between revenue and capital spending. Hyperscalers,
for example, have massive and highly diversified revenue sources that could
plausibly sustain AI investments for years. On the other hand, neoclouds must soon
earn returns on AI-optimized IaaS and associated platforms to sustain
operations.
Gartner estimates AI-optimized IaaS spending will grow from $66 billion
in 2027 to $174 billion in 2030. “The growth in spending on AI-optimized IaaS will be too low for most
AI compute providers to recover their AI investments before the current
generation of AI semiconductors is replaced,” said Sommer.
By 2030, Gartner predicts that cost pressure
and a lack of a differentiating business model will force over 80% of neocloud
providers to cease independent operations.
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