Will AI eat the world in 2026?
Datacenters and AI Infrastructure wars begin.
In 2011
(a leading investor in Substack) wrote the iconic piece Software is Eating the World. In 2023, Marc Andreessen tried to make the case again with AI, this time with a twist. Between the generation of LLMs from an academic paper in 2017 to 2025, AI isn’t yet eating the world, and certainly is not saving it!As we head into 2026, the ludicrous notions of former Open-AI researchers, the AI 2027 crowd are beginning to subside along with the throngs of profiteers of Techno Optimists for a more realistic scenario. Is AI eating the world? On most days I wonder about if Nvidia, Google or datacenters might actually be the real culprit? TSMC is sort of incredible here and the foundational companies like ASML.
Meanwhile AI will get political in 2026. As Mamdani (who is 34) met Trump (who is 79) one couldn’t help but feel that the affordability crisis, a future debt crisis and the AI Infrastructure build-out that the United States appears committed to are going to converge at some terrifying future date with potentially grave consequences. So could AI eat the world in the 2030s? Probably in ways many people don’t yet anticipate. How about next year? I have some data and speculations to run by you. It’s not some vague notion of superintelligence that awaits us, but something very different.
Michael Burry is now on Substack
“Cassandra Unchained is now Dr.
’s sole focus as he gives you a front row seat to his analytical efforts and projections for stocks, markets, and bubbles, often with an eye to history and its remarkably timeless patterns.”
With 1.6 million followers on Twitter/X, Burry’s Hyperscaler Depreciation Thesis is an important consideration into uncovering the accounting practices of hyperscalers related to AI Infrastructure. His Newsletter got around 30,000 signups in the first 24 hours. Burry estimates the true useful of the SOTA GPUs in Hyperscaler datacenters life at just 2-3 years, not the longer duration they are listing.
What to expect from this article? A fairly long rant on what we can expect in 2026 in AI with tons of infographics. Is AI about to eat the world? Why is the momentum of datacenter insatiable? Where is the AI Infrastructure glut actually leading us?
The Cardinal Sign of a Bubble: Supply-Side Gluttony
Early in AI, Late in the Trade: Why “Still Early” Won’t Save AI Valuation from History’s Gravity
📈 Data to start your week
At each point in the article please ask yourself seriously: is AI really eating the world? Let’s take a more realistic focus on this.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to AI Supremacy to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.