Nikhil Kamath I Furure Currency of Trade | Image:
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Zerodha Co-Founder Nikhil Kamath’s raised a pertinent question via his tweet on June 5, 2025 which has made netizens ponder over the likeliness of energy and electrons might replace traditional currencies like the rupee or dollar within a span of ten years.
Taking to X, Kamath said, “10 years from now, energy and electrons might be the currency of trade.” His prediction is based on the proliferation of data centres and artificial intelligence (AI), both of which require huge amounts of energy to function.
What’s Drives The Global Focus Towards Data Centres?
Data centres are massive edifices with servers that are capable of storing and managing e-content utilised on a day-to-day basis from Instagram videos to AI tools such as CoPilot. These centres work 24/7 requiring electricity for computing purposes and cooling the machine.
Currently, electricity accounts for 65 per cent of a data centre’s operating costs. Remarkably, a single new data centre can consume more power annually than 400,000 electric vehicles. Globally, data centres now use 1.5 per cent of all energy, a number that could surge to 10 per cent by 2030.
In the U.S., energy consumption by data centres stood at 4.4 per cent in 2023 and is predicted to rise to 12 per cent by 2028. The economic stakes of these developments are enormous, with generative AI potentially adding USD 400 billion to India’s GDP by the end of the decade.
Kamath believes in a future where energy and electrons could emerge as the new form of global currency. This shift is expected to be pick up basis the proliferation in rapid growth of data centres and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
India’s generative AI market is reportedly expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28 per cent in 2030, signally a strong growth momentum.
Companies such as Sify, Yotta, Netmagic, STTelemedia, Nxtra, and CtrlS are at the frontline of this transformation.
Currently on the world stage, the US leads with 3,680 data centres, followed by Germany, the UK, and China.
Meanwhile, India is well-suited regardless of having only 264 data centres, which account for 3 per cent of the world’s data centre strength. However, it reportedly manages 20 per cent of the world’s data. These data centres are majorly in cities with large-scale economic operations like Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune.
Key Hurdles and Policy Aid
Despite strong policy support from initiatives such as 100 per cent FDI allowance, and India AI Mission balancing the rapid growth of data and AI with environmental sustainability remains a challenge.
As of now only 27 per cent of data centre energy in India is clean, and the global target is to achieve 50 per cent clean energy by 2030.
