AI Needs $5 Trillion Yearly by 2040: SoftBank CEO

Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank Group, stated that artificial intelligence development will require an annual investment of $5 trillion by the year 2040. He confidently dismissed any notion of a current bubble forming around AI technology, calling such suggestions "absurd." Son argued that this significant annual expenditure would represent a mere fraction of the global GDP if AI achieves its projected 20% share.

Son's vision extends to the infrastructure required for AI, predicting that AI data centers will need a power generation capacity of 3 terawatts by 2040. This amount is nearly double the current global power consumption. He suggested that while gas power will be an initial source, nuclear fusion is expected to become the primary clean energy source for AI.

Looking ahead to 2040, Son envisions a world transformed by approximately 100 trillion AI agents making independent decisions and interacting with each other. He posited that humanity would transition from a human-centric to an agent-centric world, marking the end of humans as the sole dominant life form on Earth.