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AI-driven global growth: Which economies win, which get left behind
Tech News••
2 min read
Published by AINave Editorial • Reviewed by Ramit
TL;DRThe IMF says AI hardware investment is creating a new class of shock-resistant economies, but the gains are uneven and depend on productivity materializing.
The IMF's latest global growth forecast reveals that AI hardware investment is creating a clear divide between economies that produce chips, servers, and data center infrastructure and those that don't. For AI builders, this means the near-term demand for AI infrastructure is real and measurable, but the long-term productivity gains that would justify today's spending are not yet guaranteed.\n\n## What happened\n\nThe International Monetary Fund left its global growth forecast unchanged at 3% for this year, with U.S. growth at 2.3%, citing technology investment as a key offset to geopolitical headwinds. But beneath that steady headline, the IMF noted a surprising divergence: the world's top AI hardware exporters \u2014 South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand \u2014 beat the fund's April forecasts by an average of 4.4 percentage points in the first quarter. South Korea's economy grew at a 7.5% annualized pace, more than four times the 1.8% the IMF had projected in April.\n\nIMF economist Petya Koeva Brooks said the strength of the technology cycle and AI investment was the part that surprised them relative to April. The AI investment cycle \u2014 chips,
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