The United States is undertaking a historically unprecedented investment boom to build the computers, data centers, and other physical infrastructure needed to train and deploy Artificial Intelligence. Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been spent by hyperscalers racing to build smarter AI systems, and investment from major tech companies is set to shatter all previous records again this year. Amidst this boom, spending on data center construction has hit a new record high, now exceeding a $42B annualized pace, a more than 300% increase since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. While growth has slowed over the last six months, investment is still up more than 18% over the last year alone.
Yet that figure only reflects the costs to build data center facilities themselves, not the much larger costs of the expensive GPUs, TPUs, and other electronics housed within. Real US fixed investment in those computers and related peripheral equipment has surged to a record high of more than $270B annualized, up nearly 50% over the last year and up 77% since ChatGPT’s launch.
… America is making a globally and historically unprecedented bet on the success of Artificial Intelligence. As a share of the economy, that AI boom is already one of the largest investments in American history—dwarfing the peak of the broadband, electricity, or interstate highway buildouts and vastly exceeding the Manhattan or Apollo projects. And yet, US tech companies are doubling down, raising the stakes on their $1T gamble that AI models will continue their exponential capabilities growth and eventually become valuable enough to repay such a colossal investment. — Read More
Daily Archives: February 11, 2026
The SaaSpocalypse – The week AI killed software
The week AI killed software
Last Monday, $285 billion of market cap evaporated from software, financial services, and asset management stocks. Thomson Reuters lost $8.2 billion. In a single day. LegalZoom dropped 20%. India’s Nifty IT index posted its worst month since October 2008 — worse than the financial crisis.
he week AI killed softwarexxxxLast Monday, $285 billion of market cap evaporated from software, financial services, and asset management stocks. Thomson Reuters lost $8.2 billion. In a single day. LegalZoom dropped 20%. India’s Nifty IT index posted its worst month since October 2008 — worse than the financial crisis. — Read More
AI-Generated Text and the Detection Arms Race
In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld
stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine’s detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren’t alone. Other fiction magazines have also reported a high number of AI-generated submissions.
This is only one example of a ubiquitous trend. A legacy system relied on the difficulty of writing and cognition to limit volume. Generative AI overwhelms the system because the humans on the receiving end can’t keep up. — Read More
Rick's Cafe AI 