Kai Rizdahl

You're listening to Marketplace.

This is Marketplace.

I'm Kai Risdahl.

As you know, if you've ever spent any amount of time working on your laptop, on your actual lap, or propped on your thighs more accurately, you know those things generate a lot of heat.

You multiply that by about a bajillion and increase the sophistication of the equipment, and what you've got is the heat signature of one of those AI data centers, which is to say, heat, and lots of it.

Too much heat is bad, obviously, so data centers are cooled with water and air conditioners, which is an HVAC business opportunity if ever there was one.

Except for this.

Jensen Huang, he's the CEO of NVIDIA.

He says his company's next-generation chips aren't going to need as much cooling.

Marketplace's Nova Sofo has more on that one.

AI data centers get really, really hot.

You know that K-shaped economy we've been talking about for a while?

Higher income Americans doing all right and spending that way?

The 75 or 80 percent bottom of the income curve?

Not so much.

Its latest manifestation comes to us from the car industry.

More than 16 million new ones were sold in 2025.

That's up about 2 percent year over year, despite the fact that new cars are increasingly expensive.

The average monthly payment is now nearly $790 a month, so says Cox Automotive.

That is up from just $600 a month right before the pandemic.