Businesses and policymakers are racing to build an economy centered on AI, and it’s quickly becoming one of the biggest economic bets in history. Billions of dollars are flowing into numerous sectors to support it, and states are competing to attract investment while companies seem to announce major expansions every day.

The U.S. is trying to build the AI economy as quickly as possible, but these ambitions depend on something less visible: infrastructure.

In 2025, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. infrastructure a grade of C, while anticipating a $3.7 trillion infrastructure investment gap between capital flowing for improvements and what is required for infrastructure to be in solid working shape. What we have now is an infrastructure that includes the power grid, water systems, and broadband networks that data centers and AI-driven businesses rely heavily on. These are aging, but also mismatched to the economy nearly everyone is intent on building.

Much of the U.S. power grid, along with water and connectivity systems, was built in the 1950s and 1960s. The planning models behind them assumed a steady population increase and a consistent growth in manufacturing sectors. While infrastructure was able to keep pace with the demand for decades, that is no longer the case. Today’s economy is powered by industries that are far more infrastructure-intensive than those they are replacing. Aging systems now carry more weight than they were designed for.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most visible drivers of this increased demand , with its reliance on hyperscale data centers.

Source link