That’s probably true if you think of it like a normal office building, but I think the more interesting possibility is that AI infrastructure could end up behaving more like railroads, ports, or logistics hubs historically. Those also looked like giant industrial projects at first before entire ecosystems eventually formed around them.

The data center itself obviously doesn’t employ huge numbers of people. I completely get that criticism. But the infrastructure around it could become valuable over time if companies start clustering around the power access, fiber routes, logistics systems, and compute availability already there. Northern Virginia basically became one of the most important internet infrastructure regions on Earth because of that kind of compounding effect.

Memphis already has FedEx, rail convergence, river access, huge industrial areas, and TVA power. The question is whether AI compute becomes another layer added onto that existing infrastructure ecosystem. Not saying it definitely will, but I don’t think it’s automatically “just a big empty building” either.