#ai-spending

#ai-spending

It is the season of overindulgence, and no one has overindulged like the tech industry: this year, it has burned through roughly $1.5 trillion in AI, a level of spending usually reserved for wartime. Between 2001 and 2014, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the US an estimated $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion in direct spending. Global AI spending, according to Gartner, is forecast to reach nearly $1.5 trillion this year, putting today's AI boom in the same cash-burning league as two major wars.

"As efforts shift from hype to execution, businesses are under pressure to show ROI from rising AI spend," the company wrote. "Large-cap CEOs are seeing solid returns on current programs, particularly across administration, internal efficiency, and customer-facing applications. However, 84% of these CEOs predict that positive returns from new AI initiatives will take longer than six months to achieve. In contrast, investors are pushing for faster impact: 53% expect positive ROI in six months or less."

All that revenue growth may slow down if hyperscalers abruptly scale back their AI buildout plans. , for example, carried more debt on its balance sheet than cash in Q2 due to the aggressive AI expenditure. In Q4 2024, it had a net cash position of almost $22 billion. This is being called "Big Tech's debt boom" as the cash flow is not enough to fund data center development.

When we put it in perspective, think of everything currently running on servers in the world, the traditional ones: every bank, every transaction through Visa or ATMs, everything that the government does for you, every retail purchase, the entire coordination of the supply chains around the world, every piece of payroll, unified communication, social streaming services and gaming. They all run on servers.

Though Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Tesla are expected to have spent some $560 billion on AI development by the beginning of next year, their collective revenue from AI comes in at a paltry $35 billion. In the first half of 2025, the Atlantic notes, business spending on AI added more to GDP growth in the United States than all consumer spending combined.

Researchers at Pantheon Macroeconomics found that AI-related spending accounted for a 0.5 percentage point difference in annualized GDP growth for the first half of the year.

The S&P 500 is up 10% year-to-date, powered by the 'Magnificent Seven' tech giants whose foreign-heavy revenues are being boosted by the weaker dollar. Concentration in the top 10 stocks is at its highest since the 1960s, with earnings strength - 83% of companies beating estimates - driving sentiment.

ASML plays a key role in the semiconductor industry, creating lithography systems that are essential for chip production, particularly as AI spending escalates globally.