What role will AI inference play in shaping future demand?
Jon Mauck: AI inference—where trained models are deployed in everyday applications—is going to drive significant distributed demand. We’ll see rising needs at the edge as end users not only interact with AI as part of their everyday life but also require minimal latency for their AI usage. While AI models are becoming more efficient, the sheer scale of applications will push data center power demand to double by 2030.
Likewise, serving growing Generative AI workloads is generating very good incremental margins, so infrastructure companies are motivated to build the capacity to meet demand and avoid hitting bottlenecks. We’re really just at the beginning of building out the Generative AI delivery mechanism for infrastructure.
Where do you see the next frontier in AI infrastructure?
Jon Mauck: It’s not just about building more facilities. We believe owning the middle and last mile—fiber, towers, and edge nodes—will be even more critical as AI inference scales. As AI moves from cloud-trained to edge-delivered, the ability to control latency and reliability will define success.
Given the demands AI places on power consumption and distribution, we’ll also be seeing more digital infrastructure companies finding ways to invest in power. For instance, at DigitalBridge, we’re aiming to launch our private wealth channel and new strategies built around digital energy and stabilized data center assets. Power is a massive opportunity, and we’re building that power infrastructure adjacent to our global leading data center portfolio—especially renewables like solar. There’s about $6.5 trillion worth of investible opportunity in renewable power across the globe, and we’ve made a commitment to our customers and investors that we’re going to seize it. We estimate that AI could drive nearly $4 trillion in capital expenditures across the digital infrastructure ecosystem by 2030—likening its scale to that of past industrial revolutions. That gives a sense of just how transformational this moment is for infrastructure investors.
