Social Graph VC: Data Center Capital Expenditure to Exceed $1 Trillion by 2026

Venture capital firm Social Graph VC has released a report stating that data center capital expenditures will surpass $1 trillion by 2026, approximately double the spending of the four major hyperscale cloud providers in 2025. Jensen Huang predicts that by the end of this decade, annual spending could reach between $3 trillion and $4 trillion, potentially hitting $10 trillion by 2031. AI investments currently account for about 0.9% of global GDP, and this is expected to rise to around 1.4% by 2028. The report notes that both Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 have training power consumption below 2GW, with costs around $120 billion. Each generation of models can recoup their costs, while laboratory losses stem from the scaling up of next-generation model training by a factor of ten. Computing cannot be procured at a single price; the rental rate for H100 is approximately $1.95 per hour in the market, while hyperscale cloud rates range from $8 to $9 per hour, with hourly rates fluctuating by 137% over the year. Among the approximately $3 trillion in global data center spending expected by 2028, there is a financing gap of $1.5 trillion. Additionally, CME plans to list cash-settled H100 and B200 monthly lease futures on NYMEX on October 5, 2026, pending regulatory approval, with settlement referencing the Silicon Data Index; ICE has also announced GPU futures based on the Ornn Index.

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