The idiom “gold in them thar hills” comes from Mark Twain’s 1892 novel “The American Claimant,” and is often associated with the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th Century. History appears to be repeating itself in the same state, more than 175 years later.
The rush to cash in on artificial intelligence (AI) has reached a fevered pitch, especially in Silicon Valley, and two studies attest to the staggering potential riches.
Investments in AI solutions and services are projected to yield a global cumulative impact of $22.3 trillion by 2030, or about 3.7% of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to an IDC report Tuesday.
“Continuous business innovation through the use of AI, accelerated by growing use of AI Agents, are driving greater direct investments in infrastructure and software as well as generating substantial indirect spending across the technology delivery supply chain,” Rick Villars, group vice president of worldwide research at IDC, said in a statement. “Large cloud service providers are investing heavily in infrastructure, reflecting the growing importance of complex AI ecosystems that support regional competitiveness and business expansion.”
Fueling the surge is Generative AI spending, which is expected to jump 76% from a year ago to $644 billion, according to another report from market researcher Gartner.
“Adoption right now is the most important thing: speed, adoption, being in the market,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner. AI services are the market’s hottest segment, jumping to $27.8 billion this year from $10.6 billion in 2024. Devices and software-based GenAI were both set to nearly double, he added.
A cascade of mega-scale initiatives in AI infrastructure worldwide prompted eye-popping estimates from IDC. It calculated that for every dollar spent on AI solutions and services, an additional $4.90 will be generated in the global economy, underscoring the “significant multiplier productivity and business acceleration effect of AI investments in the coming years,” the researcher said.
Big Tech, in particular, is going all-in on large-scale investments. The Stargate project, led by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle Corp., has vowed to spend up to $500 billion over the next four years on infrastructure; the EU’s InvestAI is planning to mobilize about $260 billion for investment in AI, including a new European fund of $26 billion for AI giga factories; and French President Emmanuel Macron’s deal “of 30 to 50 billion euros” with the United Arab Emirates would build a vast AI campus and data center in France.
Meanwhile, the likes of Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., and Meta Platforms Inc., have collectively committed hundreds of billions of dollars a year on AI infrastructure and research.
“Organizations around the world are signaling a growing commitment to AI investment — particularly in building structured, regional AI hubs and factories designed to boost competitiveness and accelerate technology adoption,” said Carla La Croce, research manager of data and analytics at IDC.
