Eseandre Mordi
⬤ AI infrastructure spending is completely reshaping the U.S. economy. Real private investment in data centers has jumped over 300% in just three years, becoming the clear leader in nonresidential construction growth. The numbers show a steep, continuous climb from 2020 to 2025 — reaching levels roughly triple where they started.
⬤ The gap between data centers and everything else is massive. Traditional commercial real estate — offices, retail centers, hotels, warehouses, factories — has barely moved during the same stretch. Spending on these structures has essentially flatlined since 2020 while data-center investment rockets upward. Capital is flooding into AI infrastructure as companies race to expand computing power and digital operations, leaving conventional commercial development behind.
⬤ The economic impact is hard to overstate. In the first half of 2025, AI-driven investment delivered 62.5% of total U.S. GDP growth — a full percentage point of the 1.6% expansion recorded. Strip out that AI contribution and GDP growth drops near zero, putting the economy right on the recession line. U.S. output now leans heavily on AI-focused construction, cloud buildouts, and rapid digital infrastructure scaling.
⬤ This data-center boom signals a major structural shift in how capital gets deployed across the economy. The trend will continue shaping construction activity, corporate spending, and market behavior. As the AI cycle accelerates, markets will stay laser-focused on data-center build rates, infrastructure constraints, energy supply, and policy changes that determine how fast AI expansion can actually move.
Eseandre Mordi
