Many have called data the new oil. The digital economy runs on data. Information is crucial to digital technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI) applications. And that means the world needs more infrastructure to support the movement and processing of data.
“We’re in a once-in-a-generation investment cycle for data centers at the moment,” stated Felix Chan, a speaker at Brookfield Infrastructure‘s (NYSE: BIPC)(NYSE: BIP) annual investor day last year. Chan noted that companies need to invest over $1 trillion in the next 10 years in data centers to support the growth in data consumption, driven in part by generative AI. Brookfield Infrastructure has invested heavily in building a leading data infrastructure platform, positioning it to capitalize on this opportunity. That makes it a top stock to buy now to play the coming AI-driven data center boom.
AI runs on data
Udhay Mathialagan, who leads Brookfield’s global data center platform, stated at the same event:
AI is everywhere and machine learning and AI growth has just exploded. There’s lots of theories, lots of views on how AI will manifest itself, how it’ll be deployed. But the one thing, the one plain truth is the only way AI can be delivered is through physical data infrastructure on the ground. And what that means is data centers and lots of them.
AI needs data centers to thrive because the technology requires a tremendous amount of computing power and data storage. That computing power comes from specialized semiconductors developed by companies like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). AI apps, including the uber-popular AI ChatBot ChatGPT by OpenAI, widely use its H100 graphics cards. Companies are buying these chips hand-over-fist to power their AI ambitions. Nvidia’s data center business generated $18.4 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, a staggering 409% increase from the prior year.
The AI boom is also driving companies to secure more space in data centers to house the technology used to train AI models and generate outputs. That’s fueling a building boom that could last more than a decade….
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