The Manufacturing Executive Surging AI and Data Center CapEx: Are We on the Verge of a Bubble? w/ Wasif Khan
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Mar 17, 2026 Wasif Khan, CFO and co-founder of Via Photon with 25+ years at the finance-technology nexus, speaks about the surge in data center and AI infrastructure spending. He explores risk versus volatility, liquidity and economic cycles, uneven CapEx pockets, and where AI revenue and productivity gains may emerge. He also discusses practical strategies for managing investment cycles and building accountable engineering culture.
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Liquidity, Not Volatility, Often Drives Big Market Moves
- Liquidity cycles drive large market corrections more than short-term economic events.
- Past 20%+ market drawdowns were typically preceded by central bank liquidity contractions, so track liquidity closely.
AI CapEx Is A Different Class Than Cloud Spend
- Hyperscaler CapEx jump from ~$200B to ~$600–700B is not apples-to-apples with prior cloud capex.
- Cloud capex mainly moved enterprise on-premise storage/compute to cloud, while AI CapEx underpins automation of the global labor force with much larger potential value.
Measure AI Value Against Labor Spend Not IT Spend
- AI-driven productivity gains should be compared to labor spend (US ~$13T) not prior IT outsourcing totals.
- If AI captures large efficiency gains (e.g., 50%), infrastructure EBITDA could reach trillions, making current CapEx look modest.