US business investment in information processing equipment and software has hit a record 5.05% of GDP, above the dot com peak
BREAKING: US private fixed investment in information processing equipment and software is now up to a record 5.05% of US GDP. This figure has increased +1.08 percentage points since Q3 2023. Over this period, these investments have surged +$531 billion, to a record annual rate of $1.65 trillion. By comparison, this percentage peaked at 4.46% in Q4 2000, before the 2001 recession. Investment in information processing equipment and software has more than doubled since Q1 2018. The scale of America's AI spending boom is unprecedented.
Context
The figure is one of the clearest official measures of how much the AI buildout now weighs on the US economy.
The underlying data comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis GDP release, though the chart credits the Federal Reserve, whose FRED database republishes it. The 5.05% reading is for the second quarter of 2026, which BEA had already published, so this is not a new data release. The Kobeissi Letter is a markets commentary account.
Deep dive
On October 12, The Kobeissi Letter posted that US private fixed investment in information processing equipment and software is now up to a record 5.05% of US GDP, up 1.08 percentage points since the third quarter of 2023, and that the share peaked at 4.46% in the fourth quarter of 2000 before the 2001 recession.
FRED shows the series at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,645.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, matching the post's figure of $1.65 trillion. FRED shows $1,106.7 billion for the third quarter of 2023, a gain of about $539 billion, slightly more than the $531 billion in the post, possibly because of data revisions. Thetrading.tools, which computes the share from BEA data, also puts the second quarter reading at 5.05%, a record since 1959, up from 4.97%.
That site notes caveats. Data center buildings are counted as structures and are outside this series, though the servers and networking gear inside them are in it. Imported equipment counts here and is subtracted again in net exports, so a rising share overstates the boost to GDP growth. The category also includes medical instruments, which are unrelated to AI.
What to expect next
Watch the BEA's advance estimate for the third quarter of 2026 to see whether the share keeps climbing above 5.05%.
Also watch how much of the increase comes from imported servers and chips versus domestic spending, and whether tighter financing for AI infrastructure, which Broadcom's Hock Tan warned about on October 12, starts to slow equipment and software investment. Revisions to earlier quarters could also move the record.