The AI Industry Is Lying To You
SMRTR summary
Only a third of America's announced 241 gigawatts of data center capacity is actually under construction, while the rest exists as little more than speculative land deals and hopeful permits, according to a new Wood Mackenzie report. The reality behind the AI infrastructure boom is far more precarious than the headlines suggest.
Economist Paul Kedrosky's analysis reveals that new data center capacity additions halved in the fourth quarter of 2025, with a staggering 58 percent of committed projects lacking their own power sources. While NVIDIA sells roughly 1.6 gigawatts worth of GPUs every quarter, only about 3 gigawatts of actual data center capacity came online across America in 2025.
The math is sobering. At current installation rates, it takes six months to operationalize just one quarter's worth of NVIDIA's GPU sales, creating a growing backlog of expensive hardware waiting for homes that may never materialize.
Take OpenAI and Oracle's Stargate Abilene project, first announced in July 2024 as a 200-megawatt facility due in 2025. Two years later, only two of eight planned buildings are operational, with sources suggesting full completion won't arrive until late 2027.
The pattern repeats across the industry. Microsoft's Wisconsin data center exists mostly in press releases, while Oracle's Port Washington facility consisted of a single steel beam as of March.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Daily.dev.
Read the original article