Topline<\/p>\n
New analysis from TS Lombard shows the United States is on track to devote approximately 2% of gross domestic product to artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure in 2026, an investment well above that of any other major country that places it among the largest concentrated spending booms in modern U.S. history. <\/p>\n
People walk through the hallways at Equinix Data Center in Ashburn, Virginia, on May 9, 2024. <\/p>\n
The Washington Post via Getty ImagesKey Facts<\/p>\n
TS Lombard, an economic research and investment strategy firm, predicts the U.S. will be responsible for more than 80% of an $800 billion global spend in the sector this year and that AI buildout is on track to surpass the Gilded Age\u2019s so-called \u201cRailway Mania\u201d to become the biggest infrastructure project in US history. <\/p>\n
The nation\u2019s AI buildout is comparable in economic scale to the county\u2019s entire higher-education sector<\/a>\u2014which accounts for about 2.3% of the GDP\u2014and approaches the size of the national defense budget<\/a>, which was 2.9% of GDP in 2025 at $954 billion. <\/p>\n And while defense spending as a share of GDP is expected<\/a> to decline over the coming years \u2014 to 2.4% in 2036 according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation\u2014spending on artificial intelligence is only expected to rise. <\/p>\n By comparison, the peak of the dot-com telecom buildout<\/a> around 2000 accounted for roughly 1% to 2% of GDP, Apollo-era space spending<\/a> peaked around 0.4% of GDP and the Interstate Highway System cost<\/a> about 0.4% of GDP annually. <\/p>\n BIG NUMBER <\/p>\n 0.7%. That’s how much of their GDPs the next highest-spending countries\u2014Norway and Saudi Arabia\u2014will spend on AI this year, according to TS Lombard. China’s data center spending as a share of GDP sits at approximately 0.4%, below Malaysia and Sweden, while the Eurozone allocates roughly 0.2% and Canada trails the entire field at approximately 0.15%.<\/p>\n Key background<\/p>\n The surge in AI spending is being driven primarily by massive capital expenditures from tech companies racing to build data centers, acquire advanced semiconductor chips and expand computing capacity. Training and running AI models requires vast amounts of scarce physical infrastructure and a huge amount of energy\u2014making it much more expensive than technologies that can run on traditional coding. Tech giants Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle are responsible for the majority<\/a> of AI infrastructure investment in the United States and while supporters see the buildout as the foundation of a new technological era, skeptics<\/a> question whether the enormous investment can create enough new revenue or productivity gains to justify the cost. They argue that many AI use cases remain experimental<\/a>, competition may drive prices down and the industry could be building more computing capacity<\/a> than customers ultimately need. <\/p>\n What to watch for<\/p>\n Some of the world\u2019s biggest AI companies\u2014including Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI\u2014will go public at valuations close to $1 trillion each in the coming months. <\/p>\n CRUCIAL QUOTE<\/p>\n \u201cThe next few months of initial public offerings have every possibility of proving a peak rather than the start of another boom.\u201d Bloomberg opinion columnist Parmy Olson<\/a> wrote Thursday. <\/p>\n Further readingForbesAmericans Opposing AI Will Become America\u2019s \u2018Biggest Political Crisis,\u2019 Top Investor SaysBy Alicia Park<\/a>ForbesClaude Becomes The Enterprise Favorite As Anthropic Passes OpenAIBy Sandy Carter<\/a>ForbesTech Industry Loses 123,000 Jobs This Year\u2014AI Is The Most Cited Reason For LayoffsBy Mary Whitfill Roeloffs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline New analysis from TS Lombard shows the United States is on track to devote approximately 2% of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,33740,33755,36232,36230,36231],"class_list":["post-63820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cbs-news","tag-david-ellison","tag-nick-bilton","tag-scott-pelley","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}