Skyrocketing AI consumption to trigger 500% data center supply deficit by 2030: Study

NEW DELHI: The global annual demand for data centers is expected to reach nearly 90 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, exceeding available supply by as much as 500%, as artificial intelligence (AI) consumption and inference demand continues to skyrocket, according to the findings of an Itron Mountain-Structure Research study released on Friday.

The findings come as generative AI and agentic AI have become ubiquitous across industries, spurring new applications that require significant compute capacities. However, as demand continues to exponentially surge, the data center build-outs have started lagging, partly due to supply chain-related constraints impacting the availability of hardware components and raw materials.