Europe’s opportunity to lead the AI revolution
The pace of AI development and adoption is unprecedented. And yet, it may never be this slow again, thanks to ever-increasing compute power, the growth of data sets, and breakthroughs in machine learning algorithms.
The emergence of this industry on such a vast scale creates an opportunity for Europe to set the standard for AI globally. To ensure AI is not only powerful, but sustainable too. McKinsey estimates AI could soon contribute $13 trillion in additional economic output by 2030, boosting global GDP by about 1.2 percent a year. Imagine if Europe were able to seize a large slice of this growth before others?
The demand for AI has fast-tracked the evolution of the computing and infrastructure industries behind it. This has compelled AI cloud computing service providers to expand their IT infrastructure offerings to meet the computational, data-heavy, and energy-intensive requisites of AI, with IDC estimating spending to surpass $300 billion by 2026.
But meeting this demand is no small feat: AI-specialized data centers, which will effectively power an industry, differ from more conventional compute facilities and bring about their own challenges. AI compute outpaces regular compute in multiples, bringing with it new design requirements and vastly increased power demands. To keep pace with AI development, many US hyperscalers are now racing to retrofit and repurpose their infrastructure. Billions have been invested into the upgrading of data centers to accommodate the boom in AI tools and ensure their existing facilities are fit for purpose, and yet demand still outpaces supply.
