If you’re talking raw materials by the pound—meat, zucchini, rice, noodles—meal kits will of course cost more than buying food at grocery stores. It’s a service, after all, with added value above simple ingredient cost. Unless you’ve got quite expensive taste, you’ll easily be able to make meals at home for less than the $7 to $14 a serving that a meal kit will cost. But this said, this doesn’t necessarily mean that meal kits are expensive for what they offer. I conducted an experiment, trying to re-create four different meal-kit meals by going to my local grocery store—buying every ingredient provided by the meal kit. Turns out, if you don’t have the right sauces and spices at home already, it’s very difficult to recreate these meals at grocery stores for less than they cost from a meal kit, in part because you’ll most likely have to buy full containers of sauces and spice instead of pre-portioned ingredients,
So, is HelloFresh worth it compared to a grocery store? Caveats are in order: For staple ingredients and spices you’ll use on multiple recipes, the grocery store is of course cheaper. Once you buy a container of paprika for an individual recipe, it’ll also be there for future recipes, whereas meal-kit spices are portioned for the meal. So the real answer is that meal kits can be a quite economical way of trying out a new recipe, or a new style of cooking, without larding up your fridge with condiments you won’t use again. For ingredients you’d use less commonly, a meal kit can reduce waste and spoilage, and maybe even compete on price for an individual meal.
If your comparison point is takeout, well, the best meal delivery services on this list will almost certainly be cheaper and more nutritious. I’ve found that a meal kit in the fridge tends to be a good motivator to cook a nutritive meal—and thus can save me both the money and the cholesterol.
To really save on cost, some people like to keep testing out the trial offers and discounts. Much like mattress-in-a-box companies, meal-kit companies usually have a running promotion. Usually this takes the form of a trial discount price that’ll drop your cost by half or more on the first box, in hopes you’ll like the service enough to keep it on at full price.
For me, a meal kit a few times a week ends up balancing out well: It’s a motivating factor to eat better, and it means that when I do go to the grocery store, I can do so less mindlessly and more purposefully, since I’ve always got a few meals’ worth of ingredients in the fridge. It’s also had the side effect of broadening my culinary toolkit, keeping me from getting stuck in the same ruts.
That said, you know: It’s a set grocery expense and not necessarily a small one. I do get tired of tossing or recycling cold packs and boxes. And depending on time of year, I often prefer shopping in person for what’s seasonal and local, when produce is at its peak—an experience you don’t get from a meal kit, or from grocery delivery for that matter. If you’re cooking for a bigger household, meal kits can also lose their utility quite quickly. A convenient option for two can become a much larger expense for a family of four or six.
What If I Take a Trip Out of Town?
Pretty much every meal kit I’ve tested has an option to pause subscriptions—and there’s no particular limit to how often you can do this. The main thing is to be sure that you’ve canceled with enough lead time. Some services let you cancel or pause delivery as late as the Friday before a Monday delivery. HelloFresh requires five days’ notice. Some, like Hungryroot, may lock in next week’s order as early as the previous Monday, depending on where you live. Read your terms of service, and act accordingly.
How to Optimize Meal Kits
Don’t order too many meals per week: You know the old John Lennon line: Life is what happens when you’re busy out eating a random burrito, then thinking guiltily about the meal kit at home in your fridge. Aspirations are great, but don’t order more meals than you’re likely to make, or you’ll be sad. Err on the side of caution. Order just enough meals per week that making yourself a recipe from your HelloFresh or Home Chef box is still a delight and a convenience and an overall boon to your life—not an obligation. For me, a somewhat improvisational and impulsive person, three meals a week is the sweet spot. The prospect of a few easy meals usually saves me from an impulse weeknight DoorDash.”
Make room in your fridge: Meal kits take the place of a lot of grocery shopping. But they’re also a lot of food, and a lot to keep organized. What I like to do is clear a tall enough space in my fridge to put the whole meal kit box in the fridge, after pulling out the cold packs: This way, I’m not left worrying about which groceries belong to the meal kit, and I won’t lose any ingredients. I can just pull the whole box out when I want to make a meal. That said, some plans like Home Chef, HelloFresh, and Green Chef are very good at organizing each meal into its own separate bag. An added bonus from these more organized plans is that you’ll be able to use less space in your fridge. Over time, this will matter.
Check the recipe cards to make sure you have everything you need to make a recipe: Most meal kits expect that you’ll have certain staple ingredients in your home, usually including oil and butter. Recipes also have requirements for cookware. Check this before you start a recipe. Nothing worse than realizing you need an absentee stick of butter on step 5, with carrots already browning in the toaster oven.
Remember, you owe nothing to the recipe: Meal kit services hire lovely recipe developers, of course. And on the best meal kits, these chefs have spent a lot of time optimizing each recipe. But you owe them nothing—nothing! Add spices, change steps, season food when you want to season it. Meal kits can teach you a lot about how to make a good meal, and shake you out of tired culinary routines. But it’s your meal. Make it how you like. Have fun.
How Do We Test Meal Kits?
Chances are, wherever you are, whatever week it is, I’m testing a meal kit right now. I constantly cycle among various meal kits, testing and retesting each of my top picks at least once a year—and often multiple times per year.
I order at least four meals from each, and prepare meals according to instructions and see how well it goes. I check my own prep times against the advertised prep times (rarely an exercise in honesty!), and take note of any inconsistencies, vagueness, or frustration in the recipe card instructions. If you needlessly recommend a nonstick pan, I like you less, especially if you tell me I should heat said pan before adding food—or you later make mention of browned fond in the recipe. Nonstick isn’t cast iron or carbon, there’s no fond.
I check for the quality and freshness of the produce, and do the same for the meat. Where possible, I also look into where the meat was sourced, and check on the reputation, safety, and standards of the meat suppliers. If a meal kit swears it’s gluten-free, I check on this—calling certifying organizations where relevant.
I usually try to order as varied a menu a possible, checking in on gluten-free meals, a seafood item, a vegetarian item, and white and dark meat item—as well as meals that draw (or attempt to draw) from onspirations all over the globe. Sometimes, I test the same meal kit multiple times for different dietary needs, and our vegan tester, Molly Higgins, often tests the same meal kit I do but with a different focus.
More Meal Kits We Liked
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Sunbasket ($12 to $14 per serving): Sunbasket is a plan that focuses heavily on fresh, organic ingredients, and offers a whole lot of variety and good cooking techniques, including deglazing and attentiveness to saucing. And like Hungryroot, it also offers breakfasts and snacks to supplement meal options with little extras like coconut yogurt and sous-vide egg bites. The meal kit also lets you filter out allergen-containing items. My colleague Louryn Strampe loved the flexibility and add-ons (and even some crickets!) On my most recent test, I enjoyed in particular an excellent Greek chicken and orzo salad dish—and wonder of wonders, the advertised prep time was actually the actual prep time (about 30 minutes). The focus on organic ingredients does make Sunbasket one of the more expensive meal kit options.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage; Getty Images
Dinnerly ($8 to $9 per serving): Marley Spoon’s lower-cost meal kit, Dinnerly was long WIRED’s budget pick. Frankly, it’s still a good affordable pick. It’s also a stolidly meat-and-potatoes pick, and often straightforwardly Midwestern in its recipes. The proteins are generous and of excellent quality, and the produce is fresh. The meals are balanced. But the recipe development and instructions weren’t quite up to Marley Spoon standards on my most recent test of the kit, though I did love the middle-American trashiness and hold-my-beer inventiveness of a “Reuben meatloaf” stuffed with sauerkraut and caraway seeds. This year I ended up preferring the meals I tried from EveryPlate, which has the further merit of being a buck cheaper a meal.
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Thistle ($13 to $16 per serving): A prior top pick for solo diners, Thistle is mostly a plant-based meal kit—but there’s a $3 option to add sustainable meats to any otherwise vegan meal. It’s also so local and seasonal that the West and East coasts have different menus, and the whole middle of the country except Chicago gets none. (You can check your zip code here to see if you can get delivery.) WIRED reviewer Adrienne So has used Thistle as a means to get herself to eat more vegetables, and thus avoid a life of rickets and/or scurvy. But especially, it’s friendly to the solo diner, with individually prepared meals with low to no prep. Portions are generous enough to split among meals, and in a nice turn for those who hate having to dispose of boxes, Thistle’s drivers will pick up the cooler bag that housed last week’s meal and replace it with a new one full of food. Vegan tester Molly Higgins‘ favorite meals from Thistle were a whirlwind of textures, including a Mexican-inspired corn and poblano chile salad with adobo pinto beans and a chilled lemongrass-accented rice noodle bowl that mixed spice, tang, crisply fresh veggies, and deep umami from mushrooms and seaweed. She still dreams about it sometimes.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Tovala ($13 a serving): It’s not every day you get to try something that feels so new. Tovala offers perhaps the most ambitious solution to ready-to-heat and prepared meal delivery I’ve seen: The meal kits come with an oven! In contrast to the sogginess of many prepared meals, Tovala’s recipes come in little foil pans with recipes custom-designed for a little steam oven. The results are often delicious, especially a recent sweet chili-glazed salmon with pickled veg and noodles, and the QR code scanning function makes each recipe seamless to cook. Stick with the meal plan for six weeks, and in the bargain you get a quite affordable and powerful little convection oven, toaster, and steamer. Tovala is best as a solution for the solo diner: Meals aren’t big enough for couples, and servings are one at a time.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Gobble ($12 to $17 a serving): Gobble was our prior top pick for fast-cooked meals, in part because its speed-demon meals also offered interesting and worldly flavors. Indeed, our most recent test included Caribbean rondon, Indonesian peanut curry, and steak vierge. But while the flavors have stayed interesting, the focus on fast cooking appears to have waned since my colleague Louryn Strampe tested Gobble—and cook time estimates aren’t printed on the recipe cards. I’m still in the process of re-testing this kit, but for now Hungryroot has taken the fast-cooking crown. For small households, Gobble is also among the most expensive kits. Ordering fewer than 8 meals a week costs $15+ per serving.
Nurture Life ($8 to $10 per serving): Nurture Life is like a restaurant kids’ menu, in ready-to-eat meal kit form. We loved the idea behind this fresh-made, never-frozen delivery meal plan when we tested it a few years back: a bunch of toddler- and slightly bigger kid-friendly meals, from mac and cheese to spaghetti and meatballs to myriad variations on the chicken nugget. The meals are priced about the same as kid menu items, and each contains vegetables alongside the greatest hits.
Veestro ($13+ per serving): WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe enjoyed Veestro as a ready-to-eat vegan option, with premade meals delivered fresh, but with freezable options so you can have extra meals on hand in a pinch. The service offers a number of filters for other dietary requirements, and satisfying taste and texture—not always a guarantee on ready-to-eat meals.
Splendid Spoon ($9 to $13 per serving): Splendid Spoon is a nutrition delivery kit that offers a plethora of plant-based smoothies, soups, bowls, noodles, and shots. Everything here is natural, plant-based, and free of gluten or GMOs, including spaghetti and plant-based “meatballs.” WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe has a big yen for the smoothies in particular ($10 apiece), but wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity of a lemon juice shot that comes as part of a five-pack of dense 3-ounce superfoods.
Daily Harvest (prices vary):Daily Harvest is another ready-to-eat meal delivery service specializing in dietary restrictions plant-based, gluten- and dairy-free. Smoothies feature, as do harvest bowls, pastas, and grains. Calories are low. Ingredients are often inventive. The meal’s a lifesaver for the solo vegan eater without time to prep a meal, and WIRED vegan reviewer Molly Higgins appreciated that the meals mostly relied on the natural flavors of the vegetables themselves, accented with flavors like curry and lemongrass. As with a lot of frozen meals, however, texture wasn’t a strong suit.
Factor ($12 to $15 a serving):Factor is a delivery meal plan run by HelloFresh with ready-to-eat meals that look a lot like TV dinners. But there’s a twist: They’ve never been frozen. They were made fresh in a commissary kitchen, and shipped out with cold packs. It’s kinda like restaurant leftovers. This means that proteins in particular often maintain their texture quite well, including a chimichurri filet mignon I couldn’t believe I microwaved. Some meals, especially carb-avoidant or keto meals, are oddly mushy. But meals centered on proteins and whole starches like potatoes or rice tended to fare quite well. In fact, a recent test of Factor’s high protein plan was my favorite experience with the meal kit, and included wild rice and excellent pork loin. I do wish they’d shed their reliance on the microwave, however: When I went off-script and used a toaster oven or the Ninja Crispi air fryer, I had much better results than with the nuker. Like many ready-to-eat meals, it’s a bit more expensive than the kits you cook yourself.
Meal Kits We Didn’t Like
Sakara Life ($28+ per serving), Sakara Life offers plant-based weekly menus in fresh, prepared portions, with greens, flavorful sauces, all-organic ingredients, and textural add-ons like seeds or berries. But it’s among the most expensive meal plans we’ve tested, and neither WIRED reviewer who tried it has really cottoned to the thing. Tester Louryn Strampe questioned the science on health claims for detoxes and cleanses, while calling Sakara “egregiously expensive” and full of “bitter veggies and tart fruits.” Vegan tester Molly Higgins, meanwhile, said Sakara Life’s tinctures and metabolism supplements didn’t agree with her system, and that the mostly raw-food plan made her long for “human food.”
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage; Getty Images
Diet-to-Go ($10 to $13 per serving, plus shipping):Diet-to-Go predates the modern meal kit. Founded more than 30 years ago in Virginia, it’s a diet plan much in the tradition of Jenny Craig, offering low-calorie microwaveable meals meant to act as total meal replacement. Keto and diabetes-friendly options exist, though the most popular “Balance” plan is geared toward weight loss, with calories limited to 1,600 a day for men and a mere 1,200 for women. Anyway, as is often true with microwaved meals that may or may not arrive frozen (it depends on the season, and where you are), proteins and starches fared better than veggies, which tended to be limp and soggy. Meals were healthy, but not always flavorful, and there were a few real misses.
Running with wet feet, in wet socks, in wet shoes is the perfect recipe for blisters. It’s also a fast track to low morale. Nothing dampens spirits quicker than soaked socks. On ultra runs, I always carry spares. And when faced with wet, or even snowy, mid-winter miles, the lure of weatherproof shoes is strong. Anything that can stem the soggy tide is worth a go, right?
This isn’t as simple an answer as it sounds. In the past, a lot of runners—that includes me—felt waterproof shoes came with too many trade-offs, like thicker, heavier uppers that change the feel of your shoes or a tendency to run hot and sweaty. In general, weatherproof shoes are less comfortable.
But waterproofing technology has evolved, and it might be time for a rethink. Winterized shoes can now be as light as the regular models, breathability is better, and the comfort levels have improved. Brands are also starting to add extra puddle protection to some of the most popular shoes. So it’s time to ask the questions again: Just how much difference does a bit of Gore-Tex really make? Are there still trade-offs for that extra protection? And is it really worth paying the premium?
I spoke to the waterproofing pros, an elite ultra runner who has braved brutal conditions, and some expert running shoe testers. Here’s everything you need to know about waterproof running shoes in 2026. Need more information? Check out our guide to the Best Running Shoes, our guide to weatherproof fabrics, and our guide to the Best Rain Jackets.
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How Do Waterproof Running Shoes Work?
On a basic level, waterproof shoes add extra barriers between your nice dry socks and the wet world outside. If you’re running through puddles deep enough to breach your heel collars, you’re still going to get wet feet. But waterproof shoes can protect against rain, wet grass, snow, and smaller puddles.
Gore-Tex is probably the most common waterproofing tech in footwear, but it’s not the only solution in town. Some brands have proprietary tech, or you might come across alternative systems like eVent and Sympatex. That GTX stamp is definitely the one you’re most likely to encounter, so here’s how GTX works.
The water resistance comes from a layered system that is composed of a durable water repellent (DWR) coating to the uppers with an internal membrane, along with other details like taped seams, more sealed uppers with tighter woven mesh, gusseted tongues, and higher, gaiter-style heel collars.
The UK government is launching a call for evidence on how technology, changing market dynamics and regulation are shaping investment in mobile networks.
The call for evidence was introduced as an important step in securing a “comprehensive” view of how the UK mobile market was changing, and identifying what more can be done to support investment, innovation and competition for the benefit of consumers and business. It will look to assess the impact of factors affecting investment in high-quality connectivity by 2030, identify actions to support the sector to achieve government objectives over the next decade, and assess how the regulatory framework can be improved to support investment, innovation and competition.
As part of this, the government is announcing an action plan based on four key principles: drive investment in comprehensive, high-quality connectivity by 2030; deliver for consumers; support innovation and growth across the economy; and provide secure and resilient connectivity.
Introducing the call, Liz Lloyd, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and minister for digital economy, said that in an era of rapid technological transformation, new technologies and wireless services were critical to day-to-day lives, the economy and society in general.
Lloyd added that digital infrastructure is the core enabler of this transformation, and that it was crucial the UK’s telecommunications networks were ready for the future. She stressed that mobile and other digital networks, such as fibre networks, will drive growth and innovation across the country, deliver modern public services, increasingly underpin critical national infrastructure, and be essential for ensuring people everywhere were digitally included.
To that end, she said, its ambition remains for all populated areas to have access to higher-quality standalone 5G by 2030, and the immediate challenge was to secure investment to deliver this ambition by 2030, driving digital inclusion and ensuring business could depend on the connectivity that underpins modern life.
“Our coverage ambition goes hand in hand with affordability of access so that everyone can carry out essential online activities and, aligned with the government’s tech adoption agenda, supports take-up of premium 5G-enabled services across the economy,” said Lloyd.
Looking forward, Lloyd said the government must also anticipate how the mobile market – and technologies that underpin it – will evolve, and what this means for its objectives over the next decade, shaping a framework that supports innovation, investment and the needs of future users.
In its action plan, the minister referenced the digital inclusion action plan, in which access to secure and reliable connectivity was seen as the foundation to ensuring that people everywhere can get online. That said, delivering these benefits was dependent on substantial investment in mobile networks.
To date, the UK mobile network operators have been investing heavily in the country’s mobile networks, averaging £2bn annually between 2020 and 2024. In particular, as a result of the merger between the two component parties, VodafoneThree has committed to investing £11bn in creating its merged network, while competitors BTEE and Virgin Media O2 have also planned to invest in upgrading their networks. For example, BTEE has an ambition to deliver standalone 5G to 99% of the population by the end of 2030.
Lloyd assured that the UK government would support industry to deliver this investment, including through removing barriers to deployment and ensuring digital connectivity is appropriately considered and built into new infrastructure projects from the outset. However, she warned that the UK mobile sector stands at a critical inflection point of rapid market changes, coupled with persistent investment challenges.
Lloyd said governments and regulators across the globe are considering how their telecoms policies and regulatory frameworks can best drive innovation and investment in this new era. That, she emphasised, is why it is necessary to act immediately to understand the challenges, safeguard the UK’s international competitiveness, and deliver the high-quality, nationwide connectivity the UK relies on.
The call to action and the four-point plan were designed to realise the potential of the mobile sector, and the UK government said it recognised that doing so would require concerted and coordinated action across government and industry, to deliver the coverage needed in this decade and shape the mobile market for the future.
The government said that, in creating its call to evidence, it welcomed responses from across the ecosystem, including mobile operators, infrastructure providers, technology companies, local authorities, public sector bodies, civil society organisations, academia and investors.The call will run until 11:59pm on 21 April 2026.
A popular topic of conversation of late has been the existence of an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble and the likelihood that it will burst with great detriment to the IT industry as a whole. Yet, and perhaps surprisingly, the impact of a bursting bubble on digital twins might not be as problematic as one might think.
Ready adoption and fast diffusion of AI might warrant the tremendous investment flows of past years and could create revenue and profit streams quickly. We might as well be standing on the precipice of a bubble popping that will lead to sweeping valuation corrections. But digital twins stand to benefit from advancing AI either way. That said, the timeline of AI-enabled applications of digital twins might move, however.
Since the start of 2023, AI-related company valuations have ballooned. OpenAI is often attributed with starting the AI frenzy when releasing ChatGPT at the end of 2022. The company was valued at $29bn in 2023 and reached $500bn in October 2025, with observers wondering if the company can pull off a $1tn initial public offering soon.
AI chip leader Nvidia’s stock, meanwhile, multiplied by 13 between the beginning of 2023 and the end of October 2025, making it the first $5tn company ever. Even companies that are related but not at the centre of AI developments have increased substantially in value, with the stock price of Microsoft and Alphabet more than doubling and tripling, respectively, during that time period.
AI encompasses many different types of technologies and has many use cases, so it should be seen as an enabling technology rather than a sole application or a market per se. AI will play a major role across most application areas, but to varying degrees. Much like the way the internet shaped past decades – and will continue to shape coming decades – AI will transform industries for good in the long term. Potential potholes on the path that create setbacks are only par for the course.
Looking back to gaze ahead
It is worthwhile recalling the dot com era from the end of the last century to judge AI’s current hype. The Nasdaq Composite index – a stock index that skews toward information-technology companies – peaked at more than 5,100 points in March 2000 and then rapidly declined to a final low of barely above 1,100 points in October 2002. It took more than 12 years to move beyond 5,000 points again.
Likely, a crash is in the making. Similarly to 2000, a bursting bubble does not mean AI will go away, as internet-enabled companies and business models did not vanish. On the contrary, AI will flourish as the internet did. In fact, many infrastructure elements, such as datacentres, will become affordable for general use after lofty valuations come down.
During the late 1990s, the construction of fibre communication networks was perceived as a promising business opportunity. The business never became as profitable as expected, but the initial excitement created an infrastructure of dark fibre – unused but readily available communication lines – that supports today’s business models as a commodity that can be readily leveraged.
AI as an enabling technology will boost capabilities and accelerate the use of advanced digital twins. In particular, digital twins that have to work with difficult-to-capture data and not-completely-understood real-world dynamics will benefit tremendously. Digital twins of machinery can rely on a solid understanding of physics and measurable data that sensors can capture cost-effectively.
Factory environments have many known equipment dynamics and interactions – even workers’ likely movement patterns can be plugged into simulations. But urban digital twins attempt to capture the dynamics and behaviours of relevant elements across entire cities. They are not only subject to less understood dynamics, but also phenomena that are difficult – often impossible – to measure. AI can make available data usable and create additional data of unmeasurable phenomena.
AI in digital twins also allows the use of scenarios to better prepare for sudden events that can affect the entire system in unexpected ways. For example, city managers might use it to develop strategies for unusual weather events, pandemic-like occurrences, or localised industrial accidents with ripple effects across the urban landscape.
Digital twins and AI to plan for tomorrow’s cities
Digital twins of urban environments are difficult to design, implement and maintain, but the potential commercial and societal impact such digital twins can have promises to be substantial. Because of the number of parameters, intersecting dynamics and range of conceivable scenarios, the benefits AI can provide in understanding urban environments are considerable. AI and digital twins reinforce each other.
Digital twins of urban environments are difficult to design, implement and maintain, but the potential commercial and societal impact such digital twins can have promises to be substantial
AI can speed up the building of digital twins by supporting code development for virtual environments. Such applications accelerate overall design development and allow design details to be embedded more easily. For clients and users, AI reduces costs, enables faster implementation of digital twins, and allows for quick and inexpensive changes and alterations as requirements change or new needs arise. In addition, AI can improve the interface experience between virtual environments, as well as simulations of operations and users.
Ari Lightman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, explains: “Generative AI would be used to look at the entire simulation and turn it into a summary for humans. It could tell me things I might be missing and summarise things in a way I can understand.”
AI doesn’t only benefit digital twins, but digital twins also support AI’s capabilities. Scott Likens, emerging technology leader at PwC, points out: “We’re using digital twins to generate information for large language models…. We see an opportunity to have the digital twins generate the missing pieces of data we need, and it’s more in line with the environment because it’s based on actual data.”
Nvidia serves the market of smart cities as city planners and managers “are turning to digital twins and AI agents for urban planning scenario analysis and data-driven operational decisions”. The company is providing a range of solutions to enable users to create photo-realistic, simulation-ready digital twins of urban environments to optimise city operations.
A partnership of Japanese companies is developing the digital entertainment city Namba in Osaka, Japan. The aim is to “create the world’s first smart city that integrates artificial intelligence, extended reality and decentralised physical infrastructure networks [a blockchain-based approach to manage decentralised networks] on a city-wide scale”. The group intends to offer services beyond entertainment and tourism. Namba is a neighbourhood within Osaka, thereby limiting the claim to city-wide application of the concept.
The silver lining of AI over-investment
The existence of an AI investment bubble is increasingly perceived as a foregone conclusion. AI companies and technology suppliers are now even investing in each other’s operations, adding to lofty valuations. There are obvious indications of a bubble, but positive effects can emerge from the current investment excitement. Whatever the outcome, applications for digital twins will see their timeline solidify as the immediate future of AI plays out.
Over-investment in fibre during the dot com years ended up creating dark fibre – overbuilt fibre cables for data transmission. This infrastructure has served as a ready and inexpensive resource ever since. For AI, investment in datacentres is comparable to the fibre investment from 30 years ago
If use of AI applications proves to be an all-encompassing and rapidly growing market opportunity, the immense investment of the past couple of years will be retroactively viewed as forward-looking wisdom that locked in favourable competitive positions and profits for years to come. More likely, though, investors have outrun their headlights, and expectations of adoption and diffusion of AI applications over the next few years are overrated.
If so, there will be a shock to the system, like the burst of the dot com bubble at the beginning of the century when the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped by almost 80% within 30 months. Initial warnings existed – the former chairman of the Federal Reserve used the phrase “irrational exuberance” when discussing the development of the stock market in December 1996. Warnings of an exuberant AI bubble are common today.
Bursting investment bubbles hurt investors and bring down many companies. Indeed, 25 years ago, a slew of dot com companies vanished. But related over-investment in infrastructure can make assets suddenly affordable, opening up new opportunities. Such affordability changes cost structures that enable business models that could not have become successful at previous valuations. Infrastructure overhang – infrastructure built for rapid growth that does not materialise in the short run – leads to commodification of infrastructure elements, which can democratise a technology for incumbents and startups alike.
The over-investment in fibre during the dot com years ended up creating dark fibre – overbuilt fibre cables for data transmission. This infrastructure has served as a ready and inexpensive resource ever since. For AI, investment in datacentres is comparable to the fibre investment from 30 years ago. Morgan Stanley analysts forecast datacentre spending globally of up to almost $3tn between now and 2028. The amount is staggering, and it is difficult to imagine use cases and adoption rates that will provide the required return on investment for any business model. But as initial investors see their investments decrease or vanish, new players can snap up or use related infrastructures at bargain prices.
Alkesh Shah, a tech analyst at the Bank of America, explains the underlying reason for such recurring dynamics: “You always over-estimate how fast the change will happen. And you underestimate the magnitude of the change.”
The impact digital twins will have on the marketplace will follow a similar dichotomy between today’s expectations of rate of change and tomorrow’s impact of such change. Digital twins require many technological bits and pieces to come together. And AI will play an important role in digital twins, if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow.
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