“Filling a one-gigawatt AI data center costs about $80 billion today, so the roughly 100 GW being announced implies about $8 trillion of capital — requiring roughly $800 billion of annual profit just to service it, and on a five-to-seven-year payback that means $1–2 trillion of incremental annual revenue: "That much incremental revenue I don't believe is there... It's my view that there's no way you're going to get a return on that" (compounded by AI accelerators that must be used within about five years before being replaced).”
Chairman and CEO, IBM
Resolves against the five-to-seven-year payback window Krishna invoked (i.e. by roughly 2032): the test is whether the AI buildout produces the $1–2 trillion of incremental annual revenue his arithmetic requires. Krishna simultaneously argued AI is not a bubble and that generative AI will unlock trillions of dollars of enterprise productivity.