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The United States is undertaking a historically unprecedented investment boom to build the computers, data centers, and other physical infrastructure needed to train and deploy Artificial Intelligence. Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been spent by hyperscalers racing to build smarter AI systems, and investment from major tech companies is set to shatter all previous records again this year. Amidst this boom, spending on data center construction has hit a new record high, now exceeding a $42B annualized pace, a more than 300% increase since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. While growth has slowed over the last six months, investment is still up more than 18% over the last year alone.
Yet that figure only reflects the costs to build data center facilities themselves, not the much larger costs of the expensive GPUs, TPUs, and other electronics housed within. Real US fixed investment in those computers and related peripheral equipment has surged to a record high of more than $270B annualized, up nearly 50% over the last year and up 77% since ChatGPT’s launch.
Likewise, spending on computers is dwarfed by investment in software development, which now exceeds $750B annualized, with an increasingly large share focused on training, deploying, and integrating AI systems. Combined, spending on data center, computer, & software investment now exceeds $1T annualized and is roughly equivalent to 3.5% of US GDP, another record high. This is also likely an undercount of the true value of AI-related fixed investment, as official statistics have a difficult time accounting for spending on computer parts or properly capturing all software development. Still, spending on data center facilities now rivals total office construction, spending on computers now exceeds all factory building, and spending on software investment now dwarfs new home construction. Across nearly all dimensions, investment in AI systems continues breaking records.
That investment is also poised to break more records throughout 2026—physical capital expenditures among the hyperscalers of Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft alone will comfortably exceed $600B this year, up from $370B last year. Alphabet alone expects its spending to reach $175B-$185B in 2026, with Meta spending more than $115B and Amazon a mammoth $200B. Yet this investment boom is an almost uniquely American phenomenon—computer investment in Canada and the UK are still below their 2022 highs, while EU and Japanese investment show no rapid acceleration. Even Chinese software and information technology fixed investment, the closest competitor to the United States, is up “only” 20% over the last year, and from a much lower baseline level.
In other words, America is making a globally and historically unprecedented bet on the success of Artificial Intelligence. As a share of the economy, that AI boom is already one of the largest investments in American history—dwarfing the peak of the broadband, electricity, or interstate highway buildouts and vastly exceeding the Manhattan or Apollo projects. And yet, US tech companies are doubling down, raising the stakes on their $1T gamble that AI models will continue their exponential capabilities growth and eventually become valuable enough to repay such a colossal investment.
Breaking Down the AI Boom
Since late 2022, US tech companies have shifted from a rapid-hiring asset-light growth model to a no-hiring, capital-intense one. Over the last year, these tech companies have cut roughly 20k jobs while their net holdings of property, plants, and equipment have risen by more than $215B, the fastest growth on record. In total, these companies now actively hold nearly $700B in physical assets, more than double their pre-ChatGPT levels. Given the rapid depreciation of electronics hardware, these numbers represent significantly more gross investment than the net values suggest.
Yet the vast majority of this investment comes in the form of data center computers made outside the United States and thus have to be imported from countries like Taiwan, Mexico, and Malaysia. Real imports of these computers, plus the related parts and peripherals, have skyrocketed to a record high of nearly $400B annualized in recent quarters. Imports of large computers, including those that populate AI data centers, are up more than 220% over the last year and 300% since the launch of ChatGPT.
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