According to Gartner, by 2030, AI data center owners will need to generate cumulative revenue of $8.5 trillion to cover capital expenditures, financing costs, and achieve a 12% return on invested capital; however, projected enterprise and consumer AI revenue during the same period is expected to reach only $3.6 trillion—less than half of the required target. Gartner warns that expansion of AI infrastructure may outpace revenue growth, with rapid depreciation of compute assets, exposing over $3.5 trillion in related spending to impairment risk.

Global X expects that AI-related revenues from 15 major AI platforms and service providers will surpass infrastructure depreciation around 2027, reaching approximately $1.5 trillion by 2030—but even this level of revenue will fall short of covering financing costs and achieving the 12% return on invested capital threshold. Gartner further forecasts that over 80% of new cloud service providers will no longer operate independently by 2030. CoreWeave, meanwhile, reports that its second-quarter backlog of committed revenue reached $104.2 billion, sufficient to support debt obligations, with new customer commitments for the third quarter exceeding $25 billion.