{
  "id": 10885557,
  "title": "Just how big is $6 trillion? AI v world's largest economies",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/30/just-how-big-is-6-trillion-ai-v-worlds-largest-economies-10885557",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-30T06:47:56.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The National Business",
    "slug": "the-national-business",
    "url": "https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/2026/09/30/just-how-big-is-6-trillion-ai-v-worlds-largest-economies/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "By the year 2031, artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to require $6 trillion annually to cover the expenses associated with constructing data centers and generating the necessary chips to sustain its operations. This amount surpasses the combined economies of Germany, Japan, or the United Kingdom at present. According to Bain & Company's annual Technology Report, global spending on AI infrastructure could skyrocket to $1.5 trillion per year by 2031. This encompasses the construction of new data centers and computational capacity, as well as continuous enhancements to chips, memory, and networking equipment. If capital expenditures account for approximately a quarter of revenue, as is typical for cloud providers, the sector would necessitate $6 trillion in annual sales to sustain this growth. The existing AI services are unlikely to generate sufficient revenue to meet this demand. Consumer subscriptions, advertising, and enterprise tools like coding assistants could collectively contribute a range of $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion. This leaves a gap of around $4.2 trillion, which the report suggests must be filled by products that do not yet exist. These would include autonomous machines, factory robotics, and groundbreaking advancements in drug discovery and materials science. David Crawford, the lead author of the report, emphasized the need for \"a wave of innovation that will dwarf what mobile and cloud unlocked\". In comparison to the world's largest economies, this target is exceptionally ambitious. Based on forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 2026, only China and the United States surpass it in size. While there are some limitations to this comparison, as revenue does not equate to GDP, which measures the value added, by 2031, the IMF anticipates that India and Germany will have surpassed $6 trillion, potentially placing AI's target as the fifth-largest economy rather than the third. Despite this, the $6 trillion figure underscores the scale of the infrastructure being built and its significance among the world's largest economies.",
  "summary": "Artificial intelligence will need to bring in $6 trillion a year by 2031 to pay for the data centres and chips being built to run it. That's more than the entire economy of Germany, Japan or the UK today. In Bain and Co.'s annual Technology Report, the consultancy estimates that global spending on AI infrastructure could reach $1.5tn a year by 2031. That covers new data centres and computing…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The National UAE",
        "title": "Just how big is $6 trillion? AI v world's largest economies",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/30/just-how-big-is-6-trillion-ai-v-worlds-largest-economies",
        "published": "2026-09-30T06:47:56.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}