{"slug": "mark-cuban-warns-ai-data-centres-could-become-pickleball-courts-here-s-why", "title": "Mark Cuban Warns AI Data Centres Could Become 'Pickleball Courts': Here's Why", "summary": "Billionaire investor Mark Cuban warned on the All-In podcast that many AI data centres being built today could become underused, joking they might end up as pickleball courts. Cuban expects breakthroughs to make AI cheaper and less power-hungry, leaving current infrastructure obsolete, and compares the spending spree to the dot-com era's fibre-optic overbuild. He said a bust would hurt venture capital and private equity, not the general public.", "body_md": "# Mark Cuban Warns AI Data Centres Could Become 'Pickleball Courts': Here's Why\n\n## Cuban says breakthroughs could make AI cheaper and less power-hungry, leaving current data centres underused, hence the pickleball courts joke\n\nThe billionaire investor Mark Cuban has a blunt warning about the money pouring into artificial intelligence. He thinks a lot of the huge data centres being built today may not be needed for long. If he is right, he joked, many of them could end up as something far more ordinary: pickleball courts.\n\nCuban made the comment on the *All-In* podcast. His point was serious, even if the punchline was not. He co-owns a pickleball team, so the joke was partly at his own expense. But the argument behind it is one that a growing number of investors are taking seriously.\n\n## What Cuban Actually Said\n\nCuban said that big technology firms like Meta and Alphabet are right about one thing. They expect people to use AI far more in the years ahead, so they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build the [data centres that power it](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/big-tech-ai-computing-power-data-centres-1806051). On that, he agrees with them.\n\nHis worry is what comes next. Cuban expects new breakthroughs to make AI much cheaper to run and far less power-hungry. If that happens, a lot of the computing power being built right now would no longer be needed. The centres built for today's technology could sit half empty, which is where the pickleball joke comes in. The idea below shows what he means.\n\nThat does not mean Cuban thinks AI is a fad. He is clear that the technology is real and here to stay. His point is narrower: that companies may be spending too much, too soon, on hardware that better technology will soon leave behind.\n\nCuban is not the only one making this case. The warning matters partly because of who is making it, and because of what he lived through the last time a new technology drew this kind of money.\n\n## Why He Compares It to Past Booms\n\nCuban has seen this pattern before. He sold his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7B in stock, just before the dot-com crash. So, when he warns about overspending on new technology, his own history gives the warning some weight.\n\nHe pointed to the early 2000s, when telecoms firms laid far more fibre-optic cable than the internet needed at the time. Much of it sat unused for years. Cuban thinks AI data centres could follow the same path: a rush to build for demand that has not arrived yet, based on the assumption that everything goes perfectly. Planning for that kind of perfection, he said, is very hard to do. The comparison below sets out the pattern he is pointing to.\n\nHe is not alone in this view. Other well-known investors, including [Michael Burry](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/michael-burry-bet-against-ai-semiconductor-stocks-1807038) and Jeremy Grantham, have raised similar concerns about too much money going into AI infrastructure. All of them still see AI itself as important; their worry is about the spending, not the technology.\n\nStill, plenty of people disagree with him. The big spenders argue that AI will need so much computing power that anything built now will be used almost at once. That debate, over whether the world is building too much or too little, is now one of the biggest questions in the market.\n\n## Who Would Get Hurt\n\nOne part of Cuban's warning is oddly reassuring. He does not think a bust would look like the dot-com crash, which wiped out ordinary savers. This time, he says, the pain would fall mostly on venture capital firms, private equity, and big investment funds, not on the general public.\n\nHis reasoning is that far fewer companies are going public at wild valuations than in the late 1990s. Back then, the crash reached almost everyone with money in the stock market. Now the biggest bets are being made by professional investors and a handful of giant firms, so a fall would hurt them first.\n\nFor everyone else, the takeaway is simpler. If Cuban is right, the clearest sign of an AI overbuild may not be a market crash at all. It may just be a lot of quiet, empty buildings, some of which really could end up with a net stretched across the middle.\n\n© Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mark-cuban-warns-ai-data-centres-could-become-pickleball-courts-here-s-why", "canonical_source": "https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mark-cuban-warns-overinvestment-ai-data-centres-1810161", "published_at": "2026-07-23 08:30:06+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-23 08:37:59.826325+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Mark Cuban", "Meta", "Alphabet", "Broadcast.com", "Yahoo", "Michael Burry", "Jeremy Grantham", "All-In podcast"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mark-cuban-warns-ai-data-centres-could-become-pickleball-courts-here-s-why", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mark-cuban-warns-ai-data-centres-could-become-pickleball-courts-here-s-why.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mark-cuban-warns-ai-data-centres-could-become-pickleball-courts-here-s-why.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mark-cuban-warns-ai-data-centres-could-become-pickleball-courts-here-s-why.jsonld"}}