Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd has laid out a sobering reality check for the AI boom: demand for computing power is growing so fast that physical infrastructure cannot keep pace. The firm forecasts US data center power demand reaching up to 74 gigawatts by 2028, against a supply shortfall of roughly 49 gigawatts. Global investment in AI-related infrastructure is estimated to approach $3 trillion through 2028. Weekly token consumption surged approximately 250% between early January 2026 and mid-2026, rising from 6.4 trillion to 22.7 trillion tokens. Byrd notes that foundational constraints like energy supply are forecasted to remain a critical bottleneck until 2027 to 2028.
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