The AI trade is reshaping markets and CRE is riding shotgun.

A surge of capital into chips and data centers has turned AI into the backbone of U.S. growth — pushing tech spending to dot-com-era highs and doubling data center pipelines.

But will it pay off? Alarm bells are ringing that adoption may not match optimism. That could quickly mean swathes of massive data centers sitting vacant.

Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, sees the opposite problem. On this week’s episode, he said adoption curves are running much closer to forecasts.

His concern: CRE can’t keep up.

“All the limits are on the supply side,” he said. “On the demand side it feels limitless.”