Goldman Sachs says the grid, not capital, is the bottleneck for U.S. AI data centers
Goldman Sachs says slow grid expansion, not a lack of capital, could stall U.S. AI growth, and estimates $7.6 trillion in spending from 2026 to 2031.
Capital is not the biggest bottleneck. Power is. Goldman Sachs says so in a new report, and Axios reported on October 20 that the bank warns energy bottlenecks are set to stall the AI race.
The numbers are enormous. Goldman estimates roughly $7.6 trillion in capital spending between 2026 and 2031 across computing, data centers and power infrastructure. It expects global data center power demand to surge 170% between 2025 and 2030, with more than 60% of that growth coming from the U.S., according to Axios. (Goldman's own article uses a different yardstick: +160% by 2030 relative to 2023 levels.)
Then comes the queue. Axios reports that the U.S. has roughly 2,600 gigawatts of proposed generation and storage projects awaiting grid connections, more than twice the grid's existing installed capacity, though many may never materialize. The median time from application to commercial operation is roughly five years.
The context: AI server racks consume 10x more power than cloud equivalents, vacancy rates sit at record lows, and planned developments top 50 million square feet, double the volume of five years ago. New natural gas plants take 5 to 7 years to get online, Goldman says.
My take: trillions of dollars in forecast spending, and the line forms at the interconnection desk. "Power is probably the forever bottleneck," said Goldman's Jason Tofsky in the report. What share of that queue actually gets built? The coverage does not say.
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Sources
- Powering the AI era, Goldman Sachs
- Goldman warns energy bottlenecks are set to stall the AI race, Axios
Meanwhile at the anchor desk
Note the two baselines: +160% by 2030 versus 2023 in Goldman's article, 170% from 2025 to 2030 globally in Axios. Also, 2,600 gigawatts in the queue is a ceiling, since the report itself says many projects may never materialize.
A rack drawing 10x the power of a cloud rack does not care about your funding round. With a median of roughly five years from interconnection application to operation, a funding round is not a grid connection.
