AI is great for many tasks, but the costs to run AI are also exponentially higher than those of human workers, says NVIDIA.
NVIDIA Highlights Large Cost of Running AI Versus Human Employees, While Suggesting That Humanity's Future Revolves Around The Adoption of AI
As AI becomes part of every single IT domain, the costs to keep the entire ecosystem up and running have also grown rapidly. AI firms are spending trillions of dollars in upgrade costs of their existing AI factories while setting up new ones in multi-Gigawatt projects.
At the same time, NVIDIA, the pioneer of AI advancements, is facing a cost issue, though they don't make it seem that way; instead, the higher operational costs are seen as an advancement in AI adoption rates & how quickly it's entering every facet of our daily lives.
NVIDIA's VP or Applient Deep Learning, Bryan Catanzaro, says that for his team, the cost of AI compute is far beyond the costs of typical human employees. An AI infrastructure is a lot of money, and NVIDIA has constantly been in the race to offer the best not only to its customers, but also for its own needs. The AI giant relies heavily on AI, whether that be to power its own models, services, or next-gen technologies like the consumer-focused DLSS tech.
"For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees," Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, told Axios.
But it's not just NVIDIA that is witnessing AI costs swell beyond the cost of employees. Axios reports that Uber, Swan AI, and many other firms have also seen a sharp rise in their AI costs, with total Worldwide IT spending expected to reach $6.31 trillion in 2026, up 13.5% versus last year (Gartner).
| 2025 Spending | 2025 Growth (%) | 2026 Spending | 2026 Growth (%) | |
| Data Center Systems | 505,634 | 51.6 | 787,990 | 55.8 |
| Devices | 791,663 | 9.7 | 856,189 | 8.2 |
| Software | 1,254,449 | 12.8 | 1,443,621 | 15.1 |
| IT Services | 1,715,650 | 6.2 | 1,870,197 | 9.0 |
| Communications Services | 1,296,409 | 3.3 | 1,358,553 | 4.8 |
| Overall IT | 5,563,805 | 10.5 | 6,316,550 | 13.5 |
Source: Gartner (April 2026)
Meanwhile, NVIDIA's CEO has emphasized that the future of Humanity revolves around smart employees and humans in general who use AI to accelerate their work growth. Jensen Huang has already pushed back on the AI Job-Destruction narrative and that humans are meant to solve problems, not perform tasks. As we look forward, AI is seeing no deceleration in its pace, and Agentic AI is the start of a new era, but as of right now, AI is still very much in its early phases.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
