AI spending added 0.5% to GDP growth and the Magnificent 7 stocks are driving the market

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The S&P 500 is up 10% year-to-date and it set another new all-time high yesterday. Much of that growth has come from the Magnificent 7 tech companies, who are spending heavily on AI and its associated infrastructure. That wave of spending has become so massive that it has added 0.5% to GDP growth, according to Pantheon.

S&P 500 futures are flat this morning, premarket, suggesting that investors are not in a mood to sell after the index itself reached yet another all-time high yesterday. The S&P was up 0.32% on the day, at 6,466.58.

A lot of that growth has come from the Magnificent 7 tech stocks.

“The S&P 500 is up 10% year-to-date, powered by the ‘Magnificent Seven’ tech giants whose foreign-heavy revenues are being boosted by the weaker dollar. Concentration in the top 10 stocks is at its highest since the 1960s, with earnings strength – 83% of companies beating estimates – driving sentiment,” said Convera’s Kevin Ford in a note to clients this morning.

The vast wave of capex spending generated by those companies—on data centers, servers, software, and other types of IT kit—is showing up in the macro data, too.

AI spending has added half a percentage point to GDP growth in the first half of this year, according to Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen of Pantheon Macroeconomics.

“We estimate that GDP would have grown at a mere 0.6% annualized rate in the first half were it not for AI-related spending, clearly weaker than the reported 1.1%. Big tech’s plans to continue spending aggressively on AI over the next few years suggest a similar boost over the rest of 2025 and into 2026.”

The pair’s estimate is similar to that of Substacker Jens Nordvig, who estimated that AI capex would reach 0.7% of GDP growth this year.

It’s difficult to estimate how much all this spending is worth but it is certainly in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Pantheon’s charts show spending on all types of computers and IT kit approaching something like the better part of $1 trillion this year.

Here’s a snapshot of the action prior to the opening bell in New York:

S&P 500 futures were flat this morning, premarket, after the index closed up 0.32% yesterday, a new record high.
STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.2% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was flat in early trading.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.45%.
China’s CSI 300 was flat.
The South Korea KOSPI was flat.
India’s Nifty 50 was flat.
Bitcoin rose to $121.7K.