More and more mainstream analysts are identifying the coming AI crash, which is a good indication that it will happen soon.
So, what happens to all the data centers? They are already built but probably very expensive to maintain. Will many of them just be abandoned? Bought up by cloud computing companies? Scammers? Crypto miners? Can they be parted out and sold off piecemeal?
Will they be put to some productive use, or just become massive e-waste sites left to the locals to deal with?
They are disposable. Meta is deploying them in tents. Elements of the infrastructure like power generation and heat management could be made durable, but I imagine that isn’t a huge cost compared to replacing the entire guts of the thing every generation.
A golden age for laser tag arenas
Survielllance centers for all the data being stolen off your smartphone and flock cameras.
If anyone thinks I’m wrong, they’re completely blind to what’s going on and their future plan.
In past crypto busts, Nvidia bought used datacenter GPUs and threw them away, to keep prices of new cards high.
They will undoubtedly do this again. Probably AMD/Intel too.
And “FOMO” style crypto mining sites were just abandoned or repurposed AFAIK.
But honestly, I don’t know what will happen now. Especially to the “quick and dirty” sites like Meta’s server tents, all the supposedly temporary evaporative cooling/gas generators and such.
Used server GPUs are still pretty good processors for all sorts of things. I would guess that Nvidia pivots towards robotics and“business virtual reality,” kinda like they’re already pivoting towards more utilitarian LLMs with the Nemotron releases, so maybe the surviving GPUs will get used for that.
Apparently the US government is looking to give a massive bailout under the guise of “public partnership” so the public will pay for them and then corporations will get to use them and not pay us more than likely. They’ll be put to use, we’ll pay for them to take our jobs. It’s really the best situation possible…
/Wrist
If/when the AI bubble bursts, I’m skeptical that they would get repurposed as any kind of non-AI data center, as I doubt the demand would come anywhere close to matching the supply. The hardware would probably be sold off for pennies on the dollar, and hopefully these parts weren’t designed to be unusable in consumer PCs. I’d like to see those data centers turn into homeless shelters or something of benefit to the community, but that’d require extensive reconfiguring of the interior for a non-profit cause. More likely they’ll end up as warehouses and distribution centers, or end up as long-term vacancies.
They become the go to place for huge LAN parties.
Concentration camp warehouses, of course!
Oh just wait and see, you’ll find out how fast people will come along and scrap the metal and scavenge the RAM and other parts…
Hopefully cheap parts, but more likely just another excuse for higher consumer prices on everything.
This is from October of last year, it’s way more than I thought:
Nearly 3,000 new data centers are under construction or planned across the U.S., per a new analysis shared first with Axios — adding to the more than 4,000 already in operation.
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/18/data-center-growth-map-states
Prison camps
Skynet
