AI gold rush comes with a catch: America could run out of power by 2028 as data centers drain the grid, Morgan Stanley says
Well, it turns out the future of AI isn't powered by ambition and venture capital alone—it's powered by electricity, and we're running dangerously low. Morgan Stanley just dropped a reality check that makes all those $400 billion tech investments look like they might power nothing but expensive paperweights by 2028. The irony is delicious: we've solved the computing power problem, only to realize that electricity is the new bottleneck, and nobody's got enough of it.
Here's the sobering context: Morgan Stanley projects a potential 13 to 44-gigawatt power shortfall by 2028, with data center demand reaching 65 gigawatts while the U.S. grid can only supply what it currently does. That's equivalent to losing power for over 33 million households' worth of electricity. Currently consuming 4% of U.S. electricity, data centers are expected to claim 12% by 2030 as tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta race to build AI infrastructure. The solution? Fast-tracked natural gas turbines, nuclear power plants, and fuel cells—innovations that require not just investment, but regulatory approval and construction timelines that are anything but quick. Without rapid action, some of those cutting-edge AI chips could end up sitting idle, and the trillion-dollar AI boom could hit a wall.
