The AI gold rush

This week, Google committed $15 billion over the next five years to build a datacentre in Visakhapatnam.

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

This AI-focused hub will generate nearly 200,000 newjobs. It would have anon-trivial impact on India’s gross domestic product or GDP, which is roughly $4 trillion. Other global multinational corporations (MNCs), suchas Amazon and Microsoft, and local giants like Airtel and Reliance are also investing heavily in data centres. The aggregated datacentre buildout therefore will be very significant.

Similar stories are playing out elsewhere. Jason Furman, a Harvard economics professor, estimates that Al-related investments accounted for 92 per cent of the United States’ GDP growth in the first six months of 2025. The money went into data centres, including networking equipment, servers, cooling systems, dedicated fibre optic connections, and power capacity.

But while the investments are very real, nobody has a clear idea of how much AI will contribute to overall growth in the long term. Indeed, national accounting methods and norms may make it hard to accurately calculate this.