Goldman Sachs Sees $750B AI Capex Boom Adding 4.5 Ppts to Taiwan GDP

A torrent of investment into artificial intelligence infrastructure is set to inject $750 billion in capital expenditures from US hyperscalers by 2026, with a new Goldman Sachs report projecting the boom will add as much as 4.5 percentage points to Taiwan's real GDP.

"The AI boom is immensely juicing economic growth in Asia's technology-exporting economies," Goldman Sachs said in its report, highlighting the spillover effects from the rapid buildout of data centers and computing power.

The investment bank's forecast represents an 80% year-over-year spike in spending for the five largest US cloud providers alone, with total global investment potentially reaching double that figure, or $1.5 trillion. The report singles out Taiwan, a world leader in advanced logic chip production through firms like TSMC and AI server manufacturing, as the primary beneficiary. South Korea, home to memory chip giants like Samsung and SK Hynix, is also expected to see a 1 percentage point boost to its growth.

This massive capital injection into the semiconductor supply chain underscores investor conviction in AI, even as geopolitical tensions between the US and China simmer ahead of a planned summit between leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. For Taiwan and South Korea, the surge in technology exports is expected to offset headwinds from high energy prices and bolster their current account positions, cementing their critical role at the heart of the global AI buildout.

Taiwan's Dominance Drives Growth

The outsized impact on Taiwan stems from its dominant and technologically advanced position in the semiconductor supply chain. The island is home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, which produces the majority of the advanced logic chips that power AI accelerators for companies like Nvidia. The 4.5 percentage point contribution to real GDP projected for 2026 is a direct reflection of this manufacturing prowess, as hyperscalers race to secure the computational power needed for AI model training and operations.

Memory Chips Fuel South Korean Gains

South Korea's expected 1 percentage point GDP boost is driven by its leadership in a different, but equally critical, part of the AI hardware stack: high-bandwidth memory (HBM). Companies like Samsung and SK Hynix are key suppliers of HBM, which is essential for providing the fast data access that AI processors require. The Goldman Sachs forecast indicates that the demand for all components of the AI ecosystem is lifting all specialized boats.

The report's findings land in a market that has rallied hard on the "In Chips, We Trust" thesis, even amid broader geopolitical risks. While a high-level US-China summit aims to ease trade frictions, the underlying technology competition continues to intensify. The Goldman forecast provides a concrete, multi-year spending roadmap that could help justify lofty valuations in the sector, pointing to a durable, long-term investment cycle that extends beyond a single year's political climate.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.