AI has pumped hyperscale - but how long can it last?

"Synergy Research has released its latest data tracking the growth of the hyperscale companies, which includes the big cloud providers Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, plus others such as Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, and Oracle. While the market has long enjoyed strong growth, Synergy's figures and charts show how it went into overdrive following the launch of ChatGPT towards the end of 2022. After this, it seemed like world+dog wanted to train their own generative AI models, and demand shot up for suitable IT infrastructure and the datacenters to house it in."

"As a result, quarterly capex reported by the hyperscale operators has inflated, growing by almost 180 percent and reaching $142 billion in the third quarter of this year, according to the firm's research. The volume of datacenter capacity added each quarter has also risen by 170 percent. The effect of this can be seen in the number of capacious bit barns operated by those hyperscale providers, which has now reached 1,297 worldwide, almost three times the number that existed back in 2018."

"During the same period, total operational capacity has increased more than fourfold, due to the datacenters themselves getting larger and larger. Where a typical facility might have previously supported tens of megawatts (MW) of IT infrastructure, this is now increasing to hundreds of MW and even gigawatts (GW) of capacity. Meta, for example, announced plans earlier this year for several multi-gigawatt datacenter clusters, including a 2 GW cluster called "Hyperion" that could scale up to 5 GW and will take up a space almost as large as Manhattan island."

Hyperscale datacenter operators nearly tripled infrastructure spending over the past three years in response to surging AI demand. Quarterly operational capacity added has increased by about 170 percent while quarterly capex rose almost 180 percent to $142 billion in Q3. The number of hyperscale datacenter facilities reached 1,297 worldwide, nearly three times the 2018 total. Total operational capacity increased more than fourfold as individual facilities expanded from tens of megawatts to hundreds of megawatts and even gigawatts of IT capacity. Major providers plan multi-gigawatt clusters, exemplified by Meta's 2 GW "Hyperion" project scalable to 5 GW. The US remains the largest datacenter market.

Read at Theregister