Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes says the world is wasting multi-trillion dollars on the rapid buildout of AI data centers. Speaking to CNBC at the Gamma Prime Investing Conference in Singapore, he argued that the current construction wave will eventually leave the market with abundant computing power and sharply lower compute costs.
Hayes, co-founder and chief investment officer of crypto investment firm Maelstrom, said major technology rollouts have historically followed a familiar pattern: overbuilding, a crash and then a bailout. In his view, the excess liquidity that follows such interventions could lift Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
He said the key test may come in late 2027 or in 2028, when much of the new data center capacity now under construction is delivered. At that stage, customers will have to pay for the compute they committed to, while end demand may fall short of the scale of investment.
Hayes said SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are among the end users driving demand for computing power, while, in his assessment, they do not make money. At the same time, he acknowledged that some suppliers to the AI boom are already profitable, specifically pointing to memory chipmakers and Nvidia.
He also said he does not see betting against AI stocks as an attractive investment strategy. Instead, he is positioning for a scenario in which cheaper and more plentiful compute supports new use cases, including his Flop project, which is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027 and aims to build a spot market for compute for AI agents.
