AI agents consume five times more tokens than humans, up 14-fold since February

Token consumption by AI agents

According to Citadel data, AI agents now consume almost five times the tokens compared with human users, a 14-fold increase since February this year. The implication is that most traffic in large models no longer originates from human chats but from automated systems running long loops. This makes the marginal cost per token a critical economic question for anyone operating inference infrastructure at scale.

Thematic ETF shift

The same source points to a shift in thematic ETFs. In 2020, leading themes were clean energy, emerging-market technology and health; by 2026 the five hottest themes are AI, nuclear, space, security and infrastructure. The report authors describe this as "a total takeover of ETFs on the ambitious, capital-rich world of atoms over bits", emphasizing the move from pure software investment to heavy physical infrastructure.

Data-center construction share

Data-center construction has become a dominant share of non-governmental private building spend in several U.S. states. In New Mexico and Wyoming, where total construction is under 3 GW, data centers account for roughly 60 % of all private non-governmental building spend. In Pennsylvania, with a similar scale, the share is about 30 %. In Texas, which builds far more capacity, the share falls to 10 %, still material but less extreme.

Economic impact of data centers

Wells Fargo analyzed the economic impact in counties with existing or under-construction data centers since 2024. Counties with active facilities reported more housing, higher home values, lower unemployment and stronger job growth. In counties where construction is ongoing, employment effects remain positive, but new residential building lagged and home values did not rise at the same pace. The authors note that causality and correlation are unclear; counties such as Loudoun, Virginia were already affluent, and Texas experienced a historic housing boom before 2024.

Bottom line

Data centers are now one of the most powerful macro-economic drivers in the ecosystem. The surge in token consumption by agents, the reallocation of thematic capital toward atoms, and the localized construction and employment effects all point to the same trend: the infrastructure that runs the models is becoming a macro-economic factor that cannot be ignored.