Hyperscalers’ capital expenditure forecasts show a split between expanding and maintaining data center (DC) capacity, with upkeep costs quickly outpacing growth spending. Computer chips on a five-year replacement schedule cost about $27 billion/GW of IT at the leading edge. Enverus Intelligence® Research’s new capacity expansion report analyzes trends in DC development in the L48, projecting capacity buildout over the next decade.
We predict the increase in power capacity, coupled with chip performance improvements will lead to a 33x surge in total compute by 2035. The results of this rise can be seen through efficiency and performance gains in various large language models. Meta’s Llama 3.1 seventy billion (70B) achieved 83% on the massive multitask language understanding (MMLU) benchmark, at a 99% discount compared to OpenAI’s GPT-4. Soon after, DeepSeek’s R1 model cut costs by 97% within only two months of GPT-o1’s release, achieving higher than 90% on the MMLU benchmark.
Research Highlights
- Long-Term Load Forecast – The Data Center Decade : This report encompasses Enverus Intelligence® Research’s view on how exponential load drivers will impact our power demand forecasts from 2025-2050.
- Hyperscaler Expansion – Stepping Onto the Capex Treadmill : This report provides a refreshed L48-level view on expected growth in data center capacity and associated power demand with a focus on understanding hyperscaler capital programs.
- Reshoring Revival – Powering U.S. Industry : This report examines the impact of manufacturing load resulting from increased domestic manufacturing driven by demand, tariffs and production economics. We also explore regional load growth variations influenced by infrastructure and adoption trends, the impact of recent legislation and tax credits on manufacturing, and the comparative economics of imports versus domestic production.
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