The $2.5 Trillion Bet: Global Leaders Confront AI’s Economic Reality a

When the India AI Impact Summit opened its doors in New Delhi this week, the delegates weren’t just discussing algorithms and models. They were grappling with a number that defies easy comprehension: $2.5 trillion. That’s the amount the world is projected to spend on artificial intelligence in 2026 alone—a figure that dwarfs the Apollo Program, the Manhattan Project, and the International Space Station combined.

“We have the opportunity to improve lives at a once-in-a-generation scale, but the positive outcome is neither guaranteed, nor will it be automatic.” — Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google

A Summit Defined by Scale

The summit, running from February 16-20, has brought together an unprecedented gathering of technology leaders: OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google’s Sundar Pichai, DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Microsoft’s Brad Smith, and executives from Adobe, Accenture, and dozens of other major technology companies. Their presence signals something beyond routine corporate diplomacy—this is a moment when the industry is collectively acknowledging both the transformative potential and the staggering stakes of artificial intelligence.

According to data presented at the summit and analyzed by Al Jazeera, global corporate investment in AI reached $1.6 trillion between 2013 and 2024. To put that in perspective, the Apollo Program that landed humans on the moon cost approximately $250 billion in today’s dollars. The Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb, cost about $36 billion. The International Space Station, humanity’s most expensive single structure, came in at roughly $150 billion. AI investment has already exceeded all of them combined—and 2026 is projected to add another $2.5 trillion to that total.

The Superintelligence Timeline

OpenAI’s projection drew significant attention during the summit. CEO Sam Altman suggested that early versions of true superintelligence could arrive by the end of 2028—just two years away. “We continue to believe that iterative deployment is a key strategic insight,” Altman said, emphasizing that society needs time to integrate each new level of AI capability before the next arrives.

DeepMind’s perspective offered both confirmation and caution. CEO Demis Hassabis described artificial general intelligence as now “on the horizon” and potentially “ten times the impact of the Industrial Revolution, probably at ten times the speed of anything else.” But he added a critical caveat: “It’s still to be written how we can make that beneficial for the whole world.”

“While AI models are improving exponentially in areas such as software engineering and biomedical research, adoption across enterprises and economies will be slower.” — Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

The Adoption Paradox

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei offered a counterpoint to the superintelligence optimism. He pointed out what he called a fundamental duality: AI capabilities are improving exponentially, but the diffusion of those capabilities into the real world happens at a much slower pace. Enterprise adoption, regulatory frameworks, workforce transitions—all of these operate on timelines measured in years or decades, not months.

This tension between capability and adoption was a recurring theme. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen warned that the democratization of AI faces an inevitable challenge from commercial interests who want to keep information proprietary. “Companies have to behave differently and recognize what their sustainable advantage is,” he said. “It can’t over time be just the model. It has to be the use cases—what people are doing with the models.”

The Global South Question

Microsoft President Brad Smith raised what may be the most consequential question of the summit: who benefits from this $2.5 trillion investment? He warned that AI could either close or exacerbate the economic and technology divide between the developed world and the Global South. The concentration of AI investment is stark—US companies account for roughly 62% of private AI funding, with China at a distant second with 16%. The entire continent of Africa receives less than 1%.

Smith also pushed back against fears of human obsolescence. “Let’s also recognize this: compared to the people who lived in the Bronze Age, all of you, all of us are already geniuses,” he said. His point was that human intelligence has always been augmented by tools, and AI represents the latest—and most powerful—such augmentation.

Where the Money Goes

The summit also revealed where the $2.5 trillion in projected 2026 spending will flow, according to Gartner analysis:

AI infrastructure will capture the largest share at $1.37 trillion—data centers, specialized chips, and the physical backbone of the AI revolution. AI services will account for $589 billion, reflecting the massive consulting and implementation industry growing around the technology. AI software will see $452 billion in spending, while AI cybersecurity—increasingly critical as AI systems become targets—will receive $51 billion.

By 2027, Gartner forecasts that total AI spending will surpass $3.3 trillion annually. At that point, AI investment will exceed the GDP of all but a handful of nations.

The Jobs Question

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet addressed the employment question directly, drawing lessons from 2013 when an Oxford University study warned that 47% of US jobs were automatable. Robotic process automation was expected to devastate IT services. Instead, the opposite happened—the industry grew, adapted, and created new categories of work.

“AI will end up creating many more jobs through companies that are able to reinvent themselves and capture the technology’s full potential,” Sweet argued. But she acknowledged that this transition requires active management—companies must invest in retraining, and governments must support workers through the transition.

This article was reported by the ArtificialDaily editorial team. For more information, visit Economic Times and Al Jazeera.