You've hot on the right issues but I think assumed that upwards is the only way for them to go.

When it comes to data, current big AI models are very good at what they do. The real reason they need fresh meat is to curry favour with investors and not to improve the product. If investment in OpenAI dried up they'd immediately become insolvent. They need data to keep the money pit filling.

But the future is perhaps not a big power-gobbling datacentre but instead our own personal LLMs running directly from our phones and laptops. Growth is in building it into devices, not servers. These 'AI Agents' will be everywhere but not all in one place.

Remove the need for a datacenre and all of a sudden your power requirements dry up. Able to deploy from local devices, the scale is the market penetration. This only needs as much power as charging a phone.