Transnational hyperscalers are borrowing heavily to fund their artificial intelligence expansion, pushing up yields as investor demand cools, Reuters reported. This debt binge by corporate behemoths signals a massive consolidation of power and resources, largely outside the direct control of sovereign nations.
The U.S. government, meanwhile, will award GlobalFoundries $300 million to develop silicon photonics technology. This funding, reported by Reuters, aims to create faster AI chip links for more efficient data centers.
Elite Consolidation of Power
The United States currently controls approximately 80% of the global computing power that drives AI, according to Epoch AI, as cited by The New York Times. It's home to some 5,500 data centers, a figure ten times greater than the next closest country. This immense power is concentrated in the hands of a few transnational corporations.
Companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta control about 80 percent of this global computing power. These same entities, along with Oracle, are projected to spend roughly $750 billion this year on data centers, chips, and other AI infrastructure, a significant jump from about $400 billion last year, Goldman Sachs estimates.
By 2029, global AI infrastructure investment is forecast to exceed $1 trillion, up from $318 billion last year, according to IDC. This staggering financial commitment underscores the scale of the corporate power grab underway.
Today, approximately 20 million AI chips are crammed into data centers worldwide, underpinning the technology's growing abilities. Epoch AI projects this figure to double roughly every nine months, reaching an estimated 200 million chips by the end of 2028—ten times current levels. The world had about 2.4 million “H100 equivalent” AI chips in March 2024.
Chinese companies held roughly 1.16 million H100-equivalent chips by the end of 2025, a sharp increase from about 244,000 at the beginning of 2024. These figures, from Epoch AI, exclude smuggled chips and other offshore computing resources used by Chinese firms.
The Cost to National Resources
Last year, data centers consumed 64 gigawatts of electricity globally, a demand roughly equivalent to Germany's entire consumption, SemiAnalysis reported. This energy drain is set to quadruple by the end of 2030, eclipsing the power used by all countries in South America and Africa combined. Such consumption places an unsustainable burden on national grids and resources, diverting power from the native populations.
At the most advanced AI data centers, every gigawatt of power translates to approximately $40 billion to $60 billion in costs. This includes servers, land, connectivity, and utility hookups, according to industry estimates. These are costs that ultimately impact the broader economic landscape, often without direct benefit to the average citizen.
China’s National Energy Administration has estimated the country’s electricity use for data centers will reach around 91 gigawatts by 2030, about 6 percent of its total use. This is a significant increase from 19 gigawatts last year. Huawei, ByteDance, and Alibaba are expected to spend $111 billion this year on data centers and other AI investments, Bernstein Research indicated.
Europe's Subservient Position
The U.S.-China race for AI dominance threatens to leave the rest of the world behind, further entrenching a post-national order. France, Germany, and other European Union nations are attempting to encourage data center construction across the bloc. However, Europe, which possesses only 5 percent of global AI computing power, remains hampered by issues of electricity and land access, permitting, and financing, according to a report by AI developers and policy experts in the region. This demonstrates Europe's managed decline in a critical technological domain, leaving its peoples dependent on foreign corporate and state powers. The Persian Gulf had pledged billions to build data centers, but the ongoing war in Iran has affected those plans.