President Donald Trump’s tariffs could cause AI prices to rise, hampering CIOs amid tightening IT budgets, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs could increase the cost of components for Big Tech firms’ cloud centers, which AI companies rely on for computing power for their software, according to the April 4 story.
“The AI future is now being taxed,” Matthew Mittelsteadt, technology policy research fellow at Washington, D.C., think tank Cato Institute, told the newspaper.
If cloud costs rise, CIOs may need to lower discretionary spending and delay hardware refresh cycles with budgets already tight from macroeconomic concerns, according to Lucia Soares, CIO and head of technology transformation at investment firm Carlyle.
“Many of us will need to rebalance our portfolio of technology projects and investments without the benefit of additional budget,” Ms. Soares told the news outlet.
