The global AI industry needs to earn $6 trillion in annual revenue by 2031 to justify the capital being deployed to build data centers around the world, Bain & Co. said.

Existing consumer and enterprise AI services may generate as much as $1.8 trillion of that sum, leaving $4.2 trillion in new revenue that needs to be created, the consulting firm said Tuesday in its annual global technology report. The shortfall likely will come from nascent segments ranging from autonomous machines to robotics as well as emerging fields such as drug discovery, mental health and energy generation, it said.

“What the industry needs is a wave of innovation that will dwarf what mobile and cloud unlocked,” said David Crawford, the report’s lead author and chairman of Bain’s global technology, media, and telecommunications practice. “AI infrastructure is being built well ahead of the demand curve and funding it sustainably will require adding approximately 1% to the annual global GDP growth rate,” he said.

Bain’s report highlights the hurdles ahead to make the current pace of AI development sustainable.

Companies led by Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Oracle Corp. are investing trillions of dollars in data centers to quench AI’s demand for computational resources. Data center sizes and costs are doubling roughly every 12 to 16 months, in part due to surging prices of chips from the likes of Nvidia Corp. and SK Hynix Inc., networking equipment and other components.

The report comes as debate intensifies around the as-yet elusive returns for AI service providers. Critics worry about an increasingly interconnected web of dependencies between technology manufacturers and AI developers that help to propel lofty expectations that in turn require bigger sums of money.

While discussions today are fixated on employee productivity, the economics of AI infrastructure will demand trillions in new revenue beyond productivity gains, Bain said.

The consultancy projects $5 trillion to $6.5 trillion of data-center spending by 2030, adding at least 150 gigawatts of capacity that will further strain countries’ energy resources. Annual spending on AI infrastructure — spanning data centers, computing capacity and upgrades in accelerators and memory chips — may reach as much as $1.5 trillion by 2031, it said.

Data center developers already face shortages in transformers and water and power supplies, as well as fierce local opposition that’s blocked or delayed $68 billion worth of projects in the June quarter in the U.S.

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