TikTok U.S. wants multiple gigawatts of computing capacity. CNBC's sources say the operator has sounded out options over the coming years.
Gigawatts. A unit normally used for cities, nuclear plants, and the Flux Capacitor.
TikTok wants it for video. Short video. Videos of men eating cereal out of a boot.
Let's run the numbers. A gigawatt powers roughly a mid-sized city. TikTok wants several. Somewhere, a utility executive is lowering a pen and staring at a wall.
The headline gives no figures. No price. No timeline beyond "coming years." No named supplier. This is the financial equivalent of telling a realtor you're "looking for something with walls."
Retail traders will read this and buy something. A chip stock. A cooling company. A guy who sells extension cords. They will call it "AI infrastructure exposure." Their spouses will call it "the reason we're renting."
I sympathize, a little. It's hard to price an appetite with no menu. Everyone needs power, and nobody can say who gets paid.
The people who actually know what this means are TikTok U.S. and whoever sells electricity. Neither one is you. You're a person with a brokerage app and a dream, two things that have never once cleared the same hurdle.
Here's my analysis. The charts show a line. The line goes up, or down. I don't know. Neither does CNBC's source, who apparently knew only that the number was big.
Multiple gigawatts, and the output is a dance trend that will be dead by Thursday.
Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash
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