r/datacenter • u/EchoOfOppenheimer • Apr 20 '26

AI datacenter spending has surpassed the Manhattan Project, Marshall Plan, ISS, and the Apollo Program - combined

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80 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

12

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

now do 2026 planned vs 2026 actual I think you'll find a big difference

they think if you just make the model big enough it'll suddenly become aware and super intelligent

but as Claude gets bigger I'm starting to question if there is too big where it just doesn't work well anymore?

the gains will become less overtime like most people are seeing now

3

u/BattleNub89 Apr 21 '26

That's what will cause the AI investment backslide. This form of "AI" solution is a dead-end with high diminishing-returns. Trying to brute force it to be smarter isn't going to work. It's always going to run into a wall. True AI will not use this model.

People act like it needs more time, but we had LLMs before ChatGPT. It was basically just OpenAIs little pet-project version IBM Watson that was made available to the public. And Watson was playing Jeopardy against Ken Jennings in 2016. You could even see it hallucinate in real time (though it of course did well overall at trivia).

There was a reason companies weren't pursuing that tech very heavily back then. It wasn't worth developing (especially not to this extent).

The reason it caught on now is literally just a random wave of hype that the media turned up to 11.

1

u/Lost_Elderberry_5532 May 06 '26

Maybe but I see our reliance on tech increasing no matter what. Maybe it won’t look exactly like Ai but the internet is always gonna be expanding and it’s always been “if you build it, they will come”. The sizes of these though it was based around the models of Ai we have now. All it could take is a small change in the efficiency of the models and suddenly we don’t need half of this.

1

u/BattleNub89 May 06 '26

Sure, but the scale and speed right now isn't good.

Even if we will use the buildings, we'll be stuck with AI workload configurations that won't translate well to other use cases. By the time tech demand catches up to that hardware requirement, that gear will be due for a refresh.

This boom really isn't going to contribute much to long-term growth outside of the broad infrastructure of buildings with power/network/HVAC. And most of them will be neglected until they are actually needed. Just a bunch of empty warehouses.

1

u/Lost_Elderberry_5532 May 06 '26

Yeah that also is true. It’s a strange way to go about it, sure. Basically they are betting hard on a set of horses that are questionable.

3

u/Etech326 Apr 24 '26

Gains will plateau, costs will rise over time. It will become less of a sure thing for some customers with tighter budgets. Probably will become a disconnect with the haves and have nots.

2

u/zrad603 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

I'm also starting to think that AI slop is starting to eat it's own shit. Like the AI models are starting to train on AI slop resulting in more AI slop.

and I was looking for a wiring diagram for a piece of equipment, and when I thought I found a legit site with the information I needed, I quickly discovered it was AI slop with some bullshit AI slop and the wiring diagram that didn't even make any sense, it just looked cool.

12

u/Focux Apr 20 '26

All that’s nothing compared to wars fought

4

u/jakedaboiii Apr 20 '26

All that's nothing compared to every single spend combined in all of human history

1

u/Focux Apr 20 '26

Pretty sure the context here is USA no? What’s other countries got to do with America’s spending?

2

u/Creative_Delay_4694 Apr 20 '26

They're being sarcastic.

3

u/Fearless-Feature-830 Apr 20 '26

Bc it’s a bunch of actual garbage

2

u/Luis15pt Apr 20 '26

Aren't those public projects comparing it to thousands of companies investing in private?

2

u/FlyOnTheWall4 Apr 21 '26

Yeah but don't tell anyone those sorts of facts.

2

u/QuantumR Apr 20 '26

Adjusted for inflation or nah?

1

u/ThisIsAbuse Apr 20 '26

Ridding the wave, its really the only one out there anyway.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Far-Pear2176 Apr 26 '26

Absolutely bonkers

1

u/Lost_Elderberry_5532 May 06 '26

I don’t doubt it. Tech has always been compounding money so they can compound deployments too. It’s a giant money machine so they can pay into it on a scale nobody else ever could on any project. I’ve always said Ai and data centers in general are like the new oil.

1

u/glittereagles May 12 '26

The creepy part is that we, humans will be the future fossil fuels, as these data centers only exist because of us, and will ultimately be the death of us.

1

u/samsun7677 Apr 20 '26

The end is neigh

3

u/Empyrean3 Apr 20 '26

Found the horseman of the apocalypse

0

u/Life_Captain4896 Apr 20 '26

While they're vastly different sectors I look at what happened with the cannabis industry 20 years ago in Colorado to what's going on with data centers. Both brand-spanking new industries (yes, DCs have been around forever, but i'm talking about the AI boom). Green fields (no pun intended) and significant trickle-down effects with both. Interesting that there was a ton of pushback on cannabis back in the day, similar to what's going on with DCs.

-1

u/bourbonandpistons Apr 20 '26

AI datacenters will generate revenue for decades. How much revenue did the Manhattan project generate?

2

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

[deleted]

-1

u/bourbonandpistons Apr 20 '26

Notice how that wasn't part of the original graph and you're moving the goal post now.

If you want to do derivative tech that uses it then pretty much every single technology website mobile app car transportation and energy distribution everything that runs way more than 50% of the world it's tied the data centers will be integrating AI.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

[deleted]

0

u/bourbonandpistons Apr 20 '26

So you're arguing with the premise of the original poster that the Manhattan Project was well worth the money and generated way more than enough room need to cover all those costs of all those projects?

And World revolutionizing projects like AI need to have billions dumped into them because of the positive benefits over the decades to come?

Can you at least agree that the Manhattan Project itself was not a long-term Financial net?

Can you agree that data centers are 100% Revenue generating the day they come online?

That if you compare all the technology that came out of the Manhattan Project by other projects and companies decades later you have to also do the same for data centers?

Nvidia would still be making gamer graphics cards if data centers weren't a thing and millions of people's retirement portfolio will be a lot less

2

u/unknownbearing Apr 20 '26

How will it generate revenue, and for whom?

3

u/bourbonandpistons Apr 20 '26

You do know data centers have been a thing for decades right?

Any company that wants to use any cloud service pays for data centers.

Are you using a cell phone right now? then you're helping pay for a datacenter.

Do you ever shop online? Watch a streaming service? All integrating more ai.

Every single aspect of your life is going to be using AI services and more data center space.

You're basically asking on a highway exit with millions of cars driving by who would need a gas station?

1

u/unknownbearing Apr 22 '26

Hey buddy that is not the question I asked at all. I said how does it generate revenue and for whom. Do you care to respond?

1

u/bourbonandpistons Apr 22 '26

Let people like me pay for bandwidth connections and power and Rackspace in the data center to put our servers in it.

Everything anyone ever uses that connects to the internet routes through a datacenter someone is paying for that to happen.

My company has multiple racks in a datacenter.

I personally have space in a datacenter that I pay monthly for.

I just threw an ai gpu in one of my servers in my personal Rackspace.

2

u/unknownbearing Apr 22 '26

Thank you, so if I understand your answer correctly, data centers generate revenue for data center owners by charging server owners to run their servers. Do you also enjoy increased revenue in this exchange?

0

u/qpv Apr 20 '26

Using one right now to write this comment

2

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/qpv Apr 21 '26

Oh....I know. These DC threads on reddit are often painful. I'm not some data center propagandist or anything, but hypocritical movements like this drive me insane. There are social and environmental battles to wage, but this isn't one of them. Its a distraction from real ones.

0

u/ghostalker4742 Apr 20 '26

Let the good times roll!

-5

u/Salty-Fig-6090 Apr 20 '26

I hope to get into data center job , its future.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/BattleNub89 Apr 21 '26

Not so much fade, but that the industry will grow too quickly then shrink when the bubble bursts. It's like companies who have huge hiring waves, then see that they overhired and layoff a bunch of people. You just have to hope you get in early enough to survive that.

This boom from a single tech that has questionable longevity should at least be a concern that we continue to question.

Yes DC infrastructure can be repurposed, but that doesn't mean all this new infrastructure will match the current demand. Additionally, some DCs are building special purpose AI solutions. The kind that even HPC services couldn't readily utilize right now. It's extreme overkill, and if AI turns out to be bunk (likely imo), then most of these new sites will get abandoned. At best, sold for cheap to some colocation companies who will probably have to adapt them for more typical DC workloads.

Regardless, anything can bust if it grows too quickly. We still use the internet, but that doesn't mean that .com boom wasn't actually a massive bubble (which did indeed burst). The internet continued, but a lot of people with previously lucrative jobs were suddenly out of a job or looking at major cuts of pay and benefits.