Well you still get the establishment of 1) large industrial buildings 2) water/electricity distribution 3) trained employees who know how to manage a data center
Even if all of the GPUs inside burn out and you want to put something else entirely inside of the building, that's all still ready to go.
Although there is the possibility they all become dilapidated buildings, like abandoned factories
The building and electrical infrastructure are far cheaper than the hardware. So much so that the electricity is a small cost of the data center build out, but a major cost for the grid.
Of the most valuable part is quickly depreciating and goes unused within the first few years, it won't have a chance for long term value like fiber. If data centers become, I don't know, battery grid storage, it will be very very expensive grid storage.
Which is to say that while there was an early salivation for fiber that was eventually useful, overallocation of capital to GPUs goes to pure waste.
I'm sure there are other "emerging" markets that could make use of the GPUs, I heard game streaming is relatively popular so you can play PC games on your phone for example. I'd guess things similar to that would benefit from a ton of spare GPUs and become significantly more viable.
>The building and electrical infrastructure are far cheaper than the hardware.
Maybe it's cheaper if we measure by dollars or something, but at the same time we lack the political will to actually do it without something like AI on the horizon.
Nuclear is not very controversial, there are tons of places that would be very happy to have additional reactors, namely those with successful reactors right now. It's just super expensive to build and usually a financial boondoggle.
AI companies are saying they are trying to build nuclear because it makes them sound serious. But they are not going to build nuclear, solar and storage is cheaper more flexible and faster to build. The only real nuclear commitment is Microsoft reopening an old nuclear reactor that had become uneconomic to operate. Building anything new would be a five+ year endeavor, if we were in a place with high construction productivity like China. In the US, new nuclear is 10 years away.
But as soon as Microsoft restarted an old reactor, all their competitors felt like they had to sound as serious, so they did showy things that won't result in solving their immediate needs. Everybody's renewable commitments dwarf their nuclear commitments.
AI companies can flaunt expensive electricity at high cost for high investor impact precisely because electricity is a small cost component of their inputs. It's a hugely necessary input, and the limiting factor for most of their plans, but the dollar amount for the electricity is small. The current valuations of AI assume that a kWh put towards AI will generate far far more value than the average kWh on the grid.
Even if all of the GPUs inside burn out and you want to put something else entirely inside of the building, that's all still ready to go.
Although there is the possibility they all become dilapidated buildings, like abandoned factories