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Four broad investment categories associated with artificial intelligence accounted for an estimated 39% of U.S. real GDP growth in the first three quarters of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That is a substantial contribution, but it is not an official measure of AI alone: the categories also include spending unrelated to AI, and the calculation does not establish that AI use caused the growth.
What does the 39% estimate measure?
The St. Louis Fed estimated that information-processing equipment, software, research and development, and data-center construction contributed 0.97 percentage points to real GDP growth over the first three quarters of 2025. That contribution equaled 39% of the measured growth over the period.
This is an accounting estimate for investment categories thought to be connected to the AI buildout—not a count of dollars spent solely on AI, nor a direct measure of AI’s effect on output. Official statistics do not classify AI as a distinct industry, and national accounts do not have a line item that totals AI’s economic contribution. As the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) explained in June 2026, “There is currently no unique industry classified as ‘AI’ in official statistics because production of AI and AI services is spread across sectors.”
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsThe proxy categories are necessarily broad. Equipment, software, R&D and construction can support AI development and use, but they also serve other purposes; the St. Louis Fed notes, for example, that not all R&D is AI-related. The data-center calculation also uses an imputed value for September 2025.
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How did the contribution change during 2025?
The estimated contribution from the four categories declined over the first three quarters. The St. Louis Fed’s quarterly figures show why the 39% result should be read as a period-specific estimate rather than a fixed share of growth.
| Period | Contribution to real GDP growth | Share of GDP growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 Q1 | 1.30 percentage points | Not stated in the cited St. Louis Fed figures |
| 2025 Q2 | 1.16 percentage points | 30% |
| 2025 Q3 | 0.48 percentage points | 11% |
These are the St. Louis Fed’s estimates for the four categories, published in 2026. The 39% figure covers the first three quarters together; the quarterly figures are not shares to add together. A slowing rate of investment growth can reduce its contribution to GDP growth even while investment spending remains high.
Does corporate spending confirm the scale of the buildout?
It shows that a small group of large technology companies made substantial investments, but it measures something different from the GDP-growth contribution. The Federal Reserve Board reported that Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle had aggregate capital expenditure of $412 billion in 2025, about 1.31% of U.S. GDP. The series excludes leases. It is a total for those companies, not a measure of all U.S. AI-related investment or of how much their spending added to GDP growth.
Another indicator points to a faster pace of investment in technology-related assets: the Council of Economic Advisers reported that U.S. investment in information-processing equipment and software grew at a 28% annual rate in the first half of 2025, compared with 5.5% in 2024. This category is broader than AI, so the acceleration supports the picture of a technology investment surge without isolating AI’s share.
How widely were U.S. businesses using AI?
Federal Reserve Board data from the revised Census Business Trends and Outlook Survey put business AI use at about 18% at the end of 2025, with about 21% planning to adopt it. These are survey readings, not measures of investment or productivity. Census changed its question in November 2025: it began asking about AI in any business function rather than only in producing goods or services. Readings across that change are therefore not perfectly comparable.
Worker surveys offer a broader but distinct view of adoption. In an October 2026 research spotlight, BEA reported that Gallup data showed the share of workers reporting any AI use rising from roughly 20% in mid-2023 to nearly 50% by early 2026; frequent use rose from roughly 10% to more than 25%. These figures use a different population and measure than the Census business survey, so they should not be treated as one continuous adoption series.
Has AI already raised productivity?
There are early signs of an association, but the evidence does not yet establish how much AI itself has caused productivity or output to increase. BEA’s October 2026 spotlight found stronger post-2020 real-output trajectories in state-industry groups where workers reported more AI use. Employment differences were generally positive but less precisely estimated, a pattern more consistent with expansion alongside stable or stronger employment than with a simple story of widespread displacement.
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A separate BEA working paper found results consistent with productivity enhancement and input saving in its baseline model, but results were less robust under an alternative specification that changed the timing of AI pervasiveness. That sensitivity makes the paper an early estimate, not settled proof.
BEA’s industry-level production accounts also show that information-industry capital growth was among the top contributors to real GDP growth from 2021 to 2024. The agency said this pattern was consistent with investment in AI and AI-related services contributing significantly, while noting that AI production and services extend across sectors and the information industry is only one of the primary industries associated with AI.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to read the headline claim
- Investment contribution: The 39% estimate describes how four broad investment categories contributed to measured real GDP growth during the first three quarters of 2025.
- AI-specific spending: The estimate is not an official AI-only total, because the categories contain non-AI activity and AI-related production is distributed across industries.
- Productivity effects: Adoption and investment figures do not, by themselves, show that AI has raised economy-wide productivity; the causal evidence remains preliminary.
The defensible conclusion is that AI-related investment categories made a large but declining contribution to U.S. growth during the measured period. The figure is informative about the scale of the buildout, not proof that AI itself generated 39% of growth or that the spending will translate into lasting productivity gains.
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