Why Mark Cuban says many AI data centers could wind up as 'pickleball courts'
· Business Insider
Chauncey Scott/Billboard via Getty Images
- Mark Cuban joked that pickleball players could be unlikely winners from the AI buildout.
- He quipped that if better AI makes some data centers obsolete, they could be turned into courts.
- Cuban said the AI boom isn't another dot-com bubble but could "destroy" VCs, funds, and PE firms.
Mark Cuban joked that the AI buildout could result in pickleball fans having plenty more venues to choose from.
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The tech billionaire said during the latest episode of the "All-In" podcast that if AI models and data centers become more efficient over time, much of the computing capacity being built today will become redundant.
The former "Shark Tank" investor said that so-called hyperscalers like Meta and Alphabet, which are collectively pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into building data centers, are correctly anticipating that AI usage will rise over time.
But he predicted that "technological breakthroughs" will make AI cheaper and more power-efficient. He pointed to how there was a similar rush to build fiber networks, but eventually connection speeds accelerated, and there "wasn't a bandwidth problem anymore."
Cuban said he couldn't see how we "don't get the same price-performance improvements on the AI side and on the data center side."
If he's right, there will be "a lot of data centers that are going to be turned into pickleball courts," he quipped. Cuban is the co-owner of the Dallas Flash pickleball team.
The Broadcast.com founder, who sold his internet-radio startup to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in April 1999, sounded the alarm on Big Tech companies plowing cash into AI infrastructure, borrowing heavily to fund those outlays, and pledging to keep spending for years to come.
"That's planning for perfection, and that's going to be hard," Cuban said, adding that "nobody can predict that well."
Cuban said the AI boom isn't as extreme or wide-reaching as the internet bubble, limiting its blast radius if it does blow up.
"It's not the traditional dot-com bubble, right?" Cuban said. He pointed to fewer companies going public today at "crazy valuations" and seeing their stock prices double despite having "no revenue, no traffic, no nothing" — and fewer cab drivers chatting about their favorite internet startups to every passenger who will listen. Cuban said that "you don't see that at all today."
"So, it's not a bubble that's going to impact most people in the room, or most people across the US, but it could just destroy a lot of VCs and a lot of funds and a lot of PE, right?" he continued. "Because they're going all in."
Cuban is the latest big name to warn that AI fever could have painful consequences.
Michael Burry of "The Big Short" fame has warned that Big Tech companies are overinvesting in microchips and data centers that will quickly become obsolete.
GMO cofounder Jeremy Grantham has said AI is "obviously a bubble," and compared it to the railroad and internet bubbles as transformational ideas that sparked huge capital outlays and rampant speculation.
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