The AI industryneeds 44 gigawatts of new power capacity by 2028. Only 25 gigawatts are coming online. That 19-gigawatt gap—equivalent to 19 nuclear reactors—may be the factor that deflates the AI bubble.
While the tech world obsesses over chip shortages and GPU allocations, a more fundamental constraint is emerging. The bottleneck isn’t silicon. It’s electrons.
“The biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it’s power,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a recent interview. In Microsoft’s cutting-edge data centers, racks of expensive AI chips sit idle—not because they’re unnecessary, but because there isn’t enough power to run them.
Current US data center capacity: 51GW (5% of peak national demand)
New capacity needed by 2028: 44GW additional
Grid capacity actually coming: 25GW (57% of demand)
The gap: 19GW—roughly the generating capacity of a mid-sized European country
Grid interconnection queues now average 8+ years. Transformer lead times have tripled since 2020. Gas turbine delivery has stretched to 4.5 years, up from 2 years in 2023.
Companies that solve the power equation will dominate the AI era. Those that don’t will watch their chips sit idle.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
