IBM CEO warns that ongoing trillion-dollar AI data center buildout is unsustainable — says there is 'no way' that infrastructure costs can turn a profit

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna expressed doubts about the sustainability of the ongoing trillion-dollar AI data center buildout, stating that the infrastructure costs are unlikely to turn a profit. He estimated that filling a one-gigawatt AI facility with compute hardware requires around $80 billion, with leading AI companies proposing even larger deployments. Krishna highlighted the significant financial challenges posed by the need to replace hardware every five years and the massive capital expenditure required to support these next-gen AI infrastructures. Investors and industry experts have raised concerns about the feasibility of maintaining these data centers and the returns they can generate.