Musk’s fortune could pay the average salary for every public school teacher in the US for three years. Or fund USAID for 24 years.

Big, Beautiful Buildings

Top tech companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Tesla) are pouring billions into AI data centers, capital expenditures that dwarf many major scientific initiatives and infrastructure projects of the past. What bubble?

Big Tech capital expenditures on AI last year equaled 11 Manhattan Projects.

Power Grab

According to the International Energy Agency, data center energy use will nearly quadruple during this decade. By 2030, it will require the equivalent of 54 nuclear reactors to provide this much power. Consider: The US has only 94.

By 2030, data centers will consume as much energy as 41 million US homes.

Capitol Gains

AI firms are also amassing a different type of power—lobbying expenditures by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia are up more than tenfold since 2023. Collectively, Big Tech has become the second-biggest industry lobby in DC after Big Pharma.

Meta spent more on lobbying in 2025 than America’s three largest oil and gas companies combined.

Source: MotherJones.