Analysts say demand keeps rising despite constraints, shaky returns, and mounting investor nerves

Datacenter capital expenditure is forecast to grow 17 percent annually through 2030, reaching $1.6 trillion, with supply chain constraints pushing up the price of components.

The latest Cloud and Datacenter Market Snapshot [PDF] from analyst Omdia states that investment into AI infrastructure continues apace, despite all the talk of it being a bubble ready to burst.

However, adoption of AI remains relatively low, it claims, with many more users and higher usage per user expected. At the same time, the models are getting larger and using more compute for inference.

All of this translates to higher performance infrastructure that consumes more power, leading to rising server, rack, and datacenter power density – and even more spending on AI infrastructure.

So much so that Omdia expects datacenter capex to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17 percent over the next several years, touching $1.6 trillion by 2030 ...