AI has become the load-bearing wall of the US economy. Oxford Economics estimates AI investment and the resulting stock-market wealth effects now account for roughly one-third of recent GDP growth. Supporting that boom is an annualized ~$1.5T in business investment across software, data centers, and computing equipment.
- Data-center construction outlays hit $68.3B at an annual rate in June, while spending on all other private construction fell $101.6B over the same period.
- New orders for AI hardware surged 17% over the past year, the fastest pace since the dot-com era, while equipment investment added 0.8 percentage points to Q1 GDP growth.
The boom carries risk: Analysts now expect hyperscalers to spend nearly $4T on capital expenditures through 2029, more than $300B above estimates from a month ago. Barclays expects those companies and SpaceX to issue $285B in bonds this year, nearly triple last year's total. Surging chip prices are already adding to inflation, making the AI buildout more expensive to finance and harder to sustain.
