Goldman Sachs Lifts Global AI Investment Forecast to Over $1 Trillion

Goldman Sachs has revised its estimate of global artificial intelligence (AI) investment for this year, predicting it will reach $1.019 trillion, a significant increase from its previous forecast of approximately $800 billion.

This new projection takes into account investments from private companies and non-US firms, as well as excluding non-AI-related spending.

The report, released by Goldman Sachs economists Joseph Briggs and Sarah Dong, notes that the widely cited $794 billion hyperscaler capex figure underestimates total global AI capital expenditure by around $200 billion and overstates US domestic investment by a similar amount.

Goldman's analysis identified four structural deficiencies in using hyperscaler capex as a proxy for AI investment: ignoring investments from US private companies, omitting investments from non-US companies, including unrelated spending, and failing to account for global operations of US hyperscalers.