The development of artificial intelligence is emerging as one of the largest investment bets in US history, with the potential to surpass the construction of the railway network, highways and internet infrastructure, the “Wall Street Journal“ wrote in its analysis, BTA reported.
The boom creates jobs and supports construction and stock markets, but increases debt, competition for resources and risks to the economy.
According to a forecast by economist Steen van Nyverburg, published by the “Brookings“ (Brookings), investment in data centers and AI-related infrastructure could reach $10.3 trillion between 2025 and 2032. That would represent an average of about 3.6 percent of gross domestic product annually.
The projections are uncertain and actual spending could be significantly lower, the publication notes. Even the current scale, however, is unusual. According to “Goldman Sachs“, investment in AI in the United States will reach 1.9 percent of GDP in 2026. The last period when the development of a new sector took up a larger share of the economy was the railroad boom in the late 19th century.
The construction of data centers supports a sector in which other investment is declining. In the first seven months of the year, private data center spending reached $37 billion, about $9 billion more than in the same period in 2025, according to Commerce Department data cited in the analysis. Spending on other private construction, including housing and commercial buildings, fell by about $46 billion.
However, technology companies are drawing on scarce labor and electricity resources, which raises costs for other businesses. The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond recently reported that data center construction is making it harder to find workers in the region.
Competition for electricity is also affecting industrial investment decisions. According to a source quoted by the “Wall Street Journal“, a project for an aluminum plant with about 1,000 permanent jobs has been targeted for Oklahoma after a planned data center near Vicksburg, Mississippi, took up available electricity needed for the plant.
In many places, data centers are also driving up land prices. “It's displacing production,“ said Didi Caldwell, a location consultant for heavy industrial companies.
Along with the competition for resources, the importance of debt financing is growing. According to analyst estimates compiled by “FactSet“, capital expenditures at “Alphabet“ (Amazon), “Meta“ (Microsoft)“ (Microsoft) and “Oracle“ will reach $4.2 trillion in the four years to the end of 2029. An increasing part of this is covered by loans.
Van Nieuwerburg warns that technology companies often use off-balance sheet structures to obtain financing from banks and private lenders. Limited public information about these deals makes it difficult to assess the risk. If revenues from artificial intelligence are not enough to service the accumulated debt, the consequences could affect the entire financial system.
The effect on employment is also multifaceted. Economists remain divided on the question of the extent to which artificial intelligence is already reducing the demand for office workers. However, the growth of the sector is creating strong demand for certain specialists.
According to estimates by “LinkedIn“ (LinkedIn) artificial intelligence has contributed to the creation of more than 750,000 jobs in the United States by 2023. The median salary for tech-related job postings is about $180,000 per year, compared to $80,000 for all positions advertised.
“This is one of the stable areas in a very slow job market,“said Cory Kantenga, head of economics for “LinkedIn“ for the Americas.
Most of the new positions are for office professionals, including artificial intelligence engineers and employees who label and prepare data for training models. Since the beginning of 2024, 117,000 data center jobs have been added, not including construction employment, a significant portion of which is temporary.
In the Washington, D.C. area, the number of unionized electricians has grown from 9,000 to 17,500 in recent years, said Don Slyman of the local branch of the Industrial Electricians' Union (IBEW).
The publication gives the example of Kwaku Afriyie, a 23-year-old cybersecurity graduate who left an entry-level IT position over concerns that artificial intelligence could replace his job. He is now training to be an electrician, assembling components for data centers and earning about $30 an hour.
More experienced workers earn twice as much. Electrical engineer Tyler Beam, 28, earned $62 an hour, plus overtime, working in data centers and delivering prefabricated components to Amazon sites. The higher income has allowed him to buy a car and start looking for a home.
The AI boom is also supporting the stock market. According to cited UFR data, the value of US stocks and mutual funds reached $63 trillion in the second quarter – nearly double that at the end of 2022.
This increase in wealth is supporting consumption despite a slowdown in real wage growth. The benefits are particularly large for wealthy households, which hold a larger share of their assets in stocks, the analysis notes.
While home sales have been declining nationwide for four years, in Silicon Valley, income from artificial intelligence is boosting the luxury real estate market. Realtor Ken DeLeon describes the period as the strongest since 2000. He tells of a house listed for $9.9 million that received seven offers and sold for more than $13 million to a developer in the sector.
The growth of infrastructure is also creating inflationary pressures. Demand for equipment, especially memory chips, is leading to shortages and rising prices for technology products. In August, import prices for computers, peripherals and semiconductors were 20 percent higher than a year earlier. That is also putting pressure on prices for consumer goods such as smartphones and game consoles.
Uston Goolsby, president of the UFR Chicago branch, warned that investment in data centers is pushing up wages in related industries. UFR President Kevin Warsh cited the debt financing of big tech companies as one factor in the rise in long-term interest rates, which is making it harder to buy a home. In some areas with a high concentration of data centers, electricity bills have also increased.