The AI infrastructure boom, which began in 2023, has more than doubled the share of US GDP attributable to computing infrastructure. Investment in AI-related data center construction, compute hardware, and networking equipment accounted for ~0.8% of US GDP in Q1 2026, driving computing infrastructure as a whole to ~1.5% of GDP, up from a 2015–2022 average of ~0.7%. AI infrastructure is now the leading driver of growth in private investment in the US.
This measure focuses on private investment and excludes buildouts that occur outside of the US, even if by US-headquartered companies.
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Our data insight on data center costs indicated that the three biggest cost components are the servers, the facility, and the networking infrastructure. The growth in spending on these categories is now a meaningful component of US GDP. We approximate US-based investment in the data center buildout in each of these three categories:
- Above trend spending on computers and peripherals (BEA)
- Spending on data center construction (Census)
- Spending on networking equipment (own estimate)
We use national economic statistics when feasible. Networking equipment is still too small a share of the investment series on communications equipment to obtain as clear a growth signal as we can from the compute and peripherals series, so we construct our own estimate based on market research.