DARK CLOUDS
The increased costs could delay data-center expansion and AI adoption, setting back ambitious plans such as Stargate, the US$500 billion data-center venture between ChatGPT maker OpenAI, SoftBank Group, and Oracle.
Trump announced Stargate earlier this year, with a goal to outpace rival nations in AI development. The project would span the construction of 20 data centres in the United States.
“Stargate was already unlikely to get to that scale even before these things happened. Given the shock to the economy that these tariffs represent, it is highly unlikely that such a risky endeavor will be able to raise anywhere near that number in terms of debt financings,” Luria said.
The tariffs are also a new threat to the top cloud service providers such as Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon, already facing skepticism from investors over their steep AI budgets.
