Gartner Warns of $3.5 Trillion AI Infrastructure Impairment Risk; CoreWeave Slides 15.46%

Gartner has warned that if AI providers keep their current pace of capital expenditure, more than $3.5 trillion in AI infrastructure investment could face impairment risk by 2030, with over 80% of Neocloud providers expected to cease independent operations.

The warning sent AI cloud stocks lower on Wednesday. CoreWeave fell 15.46% to $65.78, with volume of 107 million shares, about 263% above its 3-month average. Nebius Group dropped 10.08%, and Oracle declined 8.83%.

Will Sommer, senior director analyst at Gartner, said AI providers are expected to invest nearly $1 trillion in AI infrastructure in 2026 and another $6 trillion between 2027 and 2030, but revenue from enterprise and consumer AI businesses will not be enough to support profitable returns on all planned capex. Gartner estimates AI data center owners would need to generate $8.5 trillion in cumulative revenue by 2030 to cover announced capex, financing costs and a 12% return on invested capital, while attributable enterprise and consumer AI revenue is expected at $3.6 trillion at most, leaving a $4.9 trillion gap.

Gartner also projected AI-optimized IaaS spending to rise from $66 billion in 2027 to $174 billion in 2030.