AI to Increase Data Center Power Consumption by 165% Over Five Years

The AI boom has sparked a sharp increase in the number of data centers — and with them, a growing appetite for electricity. Goldman Sachs Research expects their global power use to double by 2027. By 2030, it could jump by as much as 165%. That kind of growth raises a few eyebrows, especially in light of recent news from China.

One of the latest headlines is DeepSeek, a new AI model that’s been making waves. But alongside the buzz, there’s skepticism. People are asking whether the money pouring into AI — both now and in the near future — is really paying off. There are still open questions about how DeepSeek is trained, what kind of infrastructure it needs, and whether it can actually scale the way its creators hope.

Big tech companies and cloud platforms are racing to build massive language models that can make sense of human speech. Training these systems takes a huge amount of data — and a lot of power-hungry hardware to crunch it all. To keep up, firms are pouring money into building faster, more capable data centers. But keeping pace isn’t getting any easier. Goldman Sachs Research warns that supply might start falling short. In fact, by the end of 2026, some centers could be running at 95% capacity or even higher. Things might level out after that. As more facilities come online and the rapid push for AI starts to slow, the pressure on infrastructure could finally ease up — at least for a while.

Right now, global data centers are using about 55 GW of power, according to Goldman Sachs Research. Most of that — around 54% — goes into cloud services. Another 32% is taken up by everyday enterprise tasks like storage and email. AI workloads account for about 14%.

Gaming plays its part too. Big platforms like Roblox draw serious power, thanks to their massive user bases. Some have even turned into spaces for brand campaigns and corporate marketing, pushing server demands even higher.

The iGaming industry stands out in particular. Its growth accelerated with the release of a new generation of virtual gambling experiences that attracted thousands of new users — especially in densely populated developing countries such as India. According to contributors from the gaming portal lucky-jet-game.com.in, crash-style games like Lucky Jet have become especially popular in recent years. The game’s multimillion-strong user base undeniably adds to the overall load that the iGaming industry places on the global internet infrastructure.

By 2027, power demand from data centers is expected to climb to 84 GW. AI will take up a bigger slice of that — around 27% — while cloud computing’s share is likely to dip to 50%. Enterprise workloads are projected to shrink to about 23%.

The boom in new data centers is putting more pressure on electricity grids. To handle it, serious upgrades will be needed. Analysts say the world could end up spending close to $720 billion on power infrastructure by 2030.

In Europe, the strain is already showing. The growing presence of data centers is pushing up electricity use. Forecasts suggest that demand could rise by 10–15% over the next decade or so. By then, total data center capacity might hit around 170 GW.