By Adam Levine

The scale of the artificial intelligence investment boom was on full display in the release of the advance estimate of U.S. fourth-quarter gross domestic product. During a quarter in which real GDP growth was a weak 1.4%, AI investment was responsible for all of it and a little more. Even after accounting for the effects of the federal government shutdown, AI represented nearly 60% of the growth in the U.S. economy.

While the federal government was a drag on growth, and the rest of the fixed investment picture looked bleak, AI stood out in the GDP report.

This should come as no surprise. In 2025 four companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta Platforms -- spent more than $400 billion building AI data centers, and a lot of those expenses were domestic. Investment into software, research and development is accelerating as cloud customers rent out the servers in those data centers to develop new AI tools.

The first AI category is investment into the computers, peripherals and networking equipment that fill these data centers, which grew by 61% annualized from the previous quarter. AI equipment was responsible for a percentage point of GDP growth, more than two-thirds of the total. Investment into software, research and development was up 8.1% in the fourth quarter, and added another 0.5 percentage points to GDP growth. Construction of data center structures had a much smaller effect on GDP, but was up 18% in the quarter.

AI investment may be crowding out other uses for capital. Excluding the AI categories, fixed investment was down 10%, subtracting a percentage point from GDP growth, and adding to the negative effect of the shutdown.

Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com

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February 20, 2026 14:52 ET (19:52 GMT)

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