B[PwC predicts that global cumulative investment in data centers will reach US$31.6 trillion by 2050] September 2, PwC predicts that in order to meet the world’s growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI), cumulative global data center spending will reach US$31.6 trillion by 2050, and the scale of investment will exceed the historical infrastructure construction wave such as railways, the Internet, and electrification. PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report on Wednesday saying that if the popularity of AI exceeds its "baseline scenario" expectations, data center spending in about the next 25 years may even reach $50 trillion. By comparison, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is currently about $30 trillion. As consumers, businesses and governments increasingly use AI, technology giants such as Microsoft and Amazon, as well as smaller data center operators, are rapidly building new computing facilities around the world. Most of the investment will be in the internal equipment of the data center, including AI chips, storage chips, network equipment and servers. A[Barclays: For every US$100 earned by AI model companies, approximately US$35 to US$40 goes to the three major cloud giants] On August 30, Barclays stated in a report that for every US$100 earned by AI model companies, approximately US$35 to US$40 will flow to the three major cloud giants, namely Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), in the form of inference computing power fees. In this part of the revenue, cloud service providers can obtain an operating profit of approximately US$10 to US$20, corresponding to an operating profit margin of approximately 35% to 45%. The report pointed out that the profit margin of the AI laboratory's paid inference business has risen significantly, from low double-digit levels in 2025 to 50% to 65% or even higher in 2026, and the adjusted gross profit margin has increased by 30 to 50 percentage points year-on-year. Barclays analysts believe that actual profit margins may even be higher than the estimates in the report, but as competition in cutting-edge models intensifies and the supply of computing power continues to increase, profit margins are expected to gradually fall back.
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