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What must happen for AI’s trillion-dollar gamble to pay off

Publisher description: When Jessica Wachter, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, wanted to assess AI’s impact on the economy over the next few years, she faced a long list of business and technical uncertainties. So she started with what she calls a “remarkable fact” that is not in question: A handful of so-called…

MIT Technology Review | Sep 15, 2026 | David Rotman

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The hyperscalers will spend about $750 billion this year, building massive data centers scattered across the country. Though AI models have made dazzling progress over the last few years, it’s anyone’s guess how much compute capacity we will need. We’re all part of the AI gamble now It was one thing when the AI companies were spending cash they had accumulated over the years to build their own data centers.

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