Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs announced Tuesday that alternative funding sources will become increasingly crucial for supporting the artificial intelligence data center expansion, as technology companies seek financing options beyond conventional methods.
The financial services firm revised upward its capital expenditure projections for the four major hyperscale companies — Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet — reaching $5.3 trillion spanning fiscal years 2025 through 2030.
Goldman’s previous estimate before first-quarter earnings results had projected $4.5 trillion in capital spending for the identical timeframe.
According to Goldman’s analysis, corporations will access public, securitized and private funding sources to meet the massive scale of financial requirements.
“Private infrastructure and real estate will play an even larger role in the years ahead,” Goldman said.
The investment bank noted that distinctions between private infrastructure and real estate sectors are becoming less clear as data center developments span multiple asset classes including land acquisition, power systems, construction and technological equipment.
Goldman indicated that private infrastructure’s ability to generate structured returns and provide inflation hedging will likely stimulate additional expansion.
“Infrastructure sits at the epicenter of multiple structural tailwinds, which we expect will drive its growth and provide additional capacity for financing,” Goldman added.
Between 2021 and 2024, the private infrastructure sector expanded at approximately 11.5% annually, according to Goldman’s research.
The firm anticipates this expansion pace will accelerate, potentially approaching the 16% to 17% annual growth rates that characterized much of the 2012 to 2021 period.
Such growth trajectory would elevate infrastructure assets under management beyond $3 trillion by 2030, the brokerage concluded.
