AI Industry Hides Data-Center Reality

This is one of the clearest arguments that the AI story is being told on financial slides, not construction sites. If the physical buildout is this slow, the market is still pricing a future that exists mostly in press releases.

• –Wood Mackenzie's pipeline data is the best reality check here: huge proposed capacity, but only a fraction under active development and much less with firm utility commitments.
• –Zitron's 3GW estimate for 2025 undercuts the idea that GPU shipments are translating into an equivalent amount of live compute.
• –Treating projects like Stargate or Microsoft's campuses as "online" before they're actually built is exactly how the industry inflates demand.
• –For developers, that means GPU scarcity, regional bottlenecks, and pricing pressure may stick around longer than the hype cycle assumes.
• –The real risk is financial: speculative debt and capex can look like growth until the actual facilities fail to show up.