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The signal in one sentence: the rules are getting softer just as the spending gets bigger, and the real fight is over who gets to write them.
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The TopCat AI Signal Report 117
AI suddenly needs the world's resources."
The signal: it's not sudden. It's simultaneous.
Every major player is spending at the same time, because each one fears running short on computing power more than they fear overspending. That's a classic arms race. The result is about seven hundred twenty-five billion dollars in 2026, and analysts already see a trillion by 2027.
Then there's electricity. Data centers worldwide used about four hundred fifteen terawatt-hours in 2024. That's projected to roughly double, to around nine hundred forty-five, by 2030. And the data centers built for AI grew fifty percent in 2025 alone.
So who's paying for all this? Partly debt. The big hyperscalers raised a hundred and eight billion dollars in 2025. And the AI companies' own revenue? Still a fraction of the infrastructure being built for them.
That gap between spending and revenue is the part I'd keep my eye on.