Wall Street Questions Whether AI Spending Drove U.S. GDP Growth
Feb 23rd 2026
After a year of massive AI capital spending, Goldman Sachs economists say the investments contributed little to 2025 U.S. GDP, pointing to imported hardware and measurement limits as key reasons.
- Big tech firms spent billions last year and are expected to spend roughly $700 billion this year on new data centers to train and run AI models.
- Political leaders and some economists argued AI investment was a major driver of recent U.S. GDP growth.
- Harvard economist Jason Furman and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis previously estimated large shares of GDP growth were tied to information processing and AI-related investment.
- Goldman Sachs economists now say AI investment had little to no contribution to U.S. GDP growth in 2025.
- A main reason is that much AI hardware is imported, so spending often boosts Taiwanese and Korean GDP rather than U.S. GDP.
- There is no reliable way yet to measure AI's productivity impact, and many firms report no material gain in employment or productivity despite widespread AI adoption.