Peter Smith
⬤ The biggest threat to AI data center expansion isn't slowing adoption—it's edge AI. As devices become powerful enough to run AI models locally, the entire infrastructure model could shift away from centralized cloud servers toward processing that happens right on your phone or laptop.
⬤ Here's the economics: once your device can run a decent AI model on its own, using it costs nothing extra. Compare that to cloud-based AI, where you're paying compute fees every time you make a request. That's a fundamental cost difference that could push developers to build more applications that run locally whenever possible.
⬤ This doesn't mean data centers disappear—they'd still handle the heavy lifting for complex AI tasks. But everyday AI interactions like basic image generation, text analysis, or voice processing could increasingly happen on the device you're already carrying. That would dramatically change how AI infrastructure spending flows across the industry in the coming years.
Peter Smith
