📈#080: The $320B AI bet that's propping up the US economy

Welcome to Market Mosaic, where, in this week's edition, we explore the massive infrastructure investments reshaping global competitiveness, analyse how AI spending has become the unexpected backbone of economic growth, and show the hidden vulnerabilities threatening supply chain stability across global markets.

Also, download our newly-released Consumer Insights report (H1 2025 edition) here on “how AI and market feedback drive product innovation.”

Let’s now dive into the insights and stories.

— Insights Team, Rwazi

In our edition this week:

• Sector Performance Tracker

• Technology

• Economy

• Consumer Universe

• Supply Chain
  

Our analysis of chip infrastructure investments shows a stark competitive space that's challenging the technology sector. Google emerges as the undisputed leader in AI computing power with an estimated 1.24 million H100-equivalent chips, significantly outpacing its closest competitors.

The Power Hierarchy:

• Google: 1.24M H100 equivalents (including 320K custom TPUs)

• Microsoft/OpenAI: 660K H100 equivalents

• Meta: 400K H100 equivalents

• Amazon: 290K H100 equivalents

This massive infrastructure advantage translates directly into consumer experiences. Google's superior compute capacity enables more sophisticated AI features across its product ecosystem, from enhanced search capabilities to advanced language models that consumers increasingly expect as standard offerings.

AI investments have become the unexpected backbone of US economic growth, contributing 1.3 percentage points to the 3% GDP growth last quarter. This is now a larger economic impact than telecom and internet infrastructure spending during the dot-com boom of 2000.

Tech giants are collectively spending $69 billion quarterly on AI infrastructure, with plans to increase this to $320 billion annually, a 39% jump from last year's $230 billion. Remarkably, AI spending now contributes more to GDP growth than traditional consumer spending, marking a fundamental shift in economic drivers.

However, this concentration of economic growth in AI infrastructure raises concerns about sustainability. If AI fails to deliver promised productivity gains, the economic impact could mirror historical bubbles like the railroad boom or dot-com crash.

While trade headlines focus on goods deficits, our analysis shows a more nuanced picture of American economic relationships. The U.S. maintains substantial services trade surpluses with 16 of its 20 free trade partners, showing the country's competitive advantages in knowledge-based sectors.

Services Surplus Leaders:

• Canada: $34.9 billion surplus

• Singapore: $27.2 billion surplus

• Australia: $16.0 billion surplus

• South Korea: $10.7 billion surplus

Consumer implications: These service exports, including financial services, technology consulting, entertainment, and education, directly support high-paying American jobs and drive innovation in consumer-facing industries. The surplus also reflects American companies' ability to export expertise and intellectual property rather than just physical goods.

Despite a massive $181.5 billion goods deficit with Mexico, the U.S. maintains a $2.5 billion services surplus, showing the complementary nature of the economic relationship beyond manufacturing.

Our comprehensive analysis of over 67,000 critical UK supply chain locations reveals alarming vulnerability to extreme weather events. More than 3,200 essential economic facilities, representing 5% of the nation's critical infrastructure, sit directly in high-risk storm zones.

Vulnerability Breakdown:

• Manufacturing: 2,561 factories (6%) highly exposed

• Logistics: 604 warehouses (4%) facing significant risk

• Data Centers: 47 critical facilities (3%) in hazard zones

Regional Risk Hotspots:

• Manchester Area: £1.6 billion in factory revenue at risk

• Cardiff Area: 10% of regional consumer goods storage threatened

• Glasgow Area: Dense data center cluster endangering digital infrastructure

Consumer impact: These vulnerabilities translate directly into potential supply chain disruptions that could affect everything from grocery availability to digital services. The concentration of risk in specific economic corridors means that single weather events could trigger cascading consumer impacts across multiple sectors.

We are excited to announce the release of our Consumer Insights Report H1 2025, themed “Building with Data: How AI and Market Feedback Drive Product Innovation.”

We analysed, predicted presented how AI technology and real-time market feedback are transforming product innovation in global markets. And this report provides the strategic roadmap for you to navigate this shift.

As a Market Mosaic subscriber, you receive immediate download access, priority invitation to our insights webinar and direct access to our Insights team for consultations.

📈 What you will get:

✅ 50+ pages of actionable insights on market trends in H1 2025
✅ Global consumer segmentation analysis
✅ AI adaptation strategies
✅ H2 2025 predictions and market forecasts
✅ Strategic frameworks you can implement immediately
✅ Visual data storytelling with compelling charts

This report is our most comprehensive analysis of global consumer behaviour and AI adoption trends for you to stay ahead of the curve.

Meet Anirudh Ramesh, a strategy consultant at Bain and Company, with a strong track record of driving innovation at the intersection of business, technology, and inclusive development.

In our latest Conversations with Market Mosaic, Anirudh speaks on AI-powered market entry and growth strategy for global businesses across diverse sectors.

🟣 Market Mosaic: How can AI help businesses across global markets build with data?

🟢 Anirudh Ramesh: AI is a starting point that helps us to understand which datasets are required. And I think that’s a very critical starting point, because what is happening now with additional data is that you fail and experiment faster.

It basically enables companies to have a closed feedback loop of sorts, which did not exist before, in order to achieve outcome-driven analysis.

After years of building the world's most comprehensive market intelligence platform and helping global enterprises understand "what's happening" and "what it means," we are now solving the final piece of the puzzle: "How do we act on this?"

Want to learn how Sena helps teams like yours execute strategic moves and explore market opportunities in real-time across functions?

 
Thank you for reading and joining us on Market Mosaic this week. We hope this edition provides valuable, actionable insights for decisions with data. 📊

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Here are the insightful visuals we shared on LinkedIn. Feel free to check them out, comment or repost if it hits home for you.