That 2025 would be another banner year for artificial intelligence was not in doubt. But few realised just how much it would belong to the builders of AI rather than the users — or how that imbalance would start to perturb Wall Street.
Investors were transfixed all year by the steady escalation in the amount of capital being thrown at AI data centres. Morgan Stanley had predicted spending would grow 20-25 per cent. By last month, that forecast had ratcheted up to 68 per cent, with the total projected to hit $470bn before jumping again to $620bn in 2026. Even that pales compared with the giant deals that were being signed in the second half of this year, led by the $1.4tn of new data centres that OpenAI has lined up.
For now, the companies leading the charge report that demand for all that new capacity is running comfortably ahead of supply. That makes this fundamentally different from the internet mania of the late 1990s, when all the new telecoms networks far exceeded requirements.