U.S. business spending related to artificial intelligence (AI) grew substantially in 2025 among publicly traded firms, which account for the bulk of overall investment. Analyzing sentiment data from quarterly company earnings calls can help infer current and evolving optimism towards AI. Public firm data show growth in capital spending and research and development funding has come entirely from the largest companies that are positive about AI. While market concentration among large firms raises some challenges, optimism measures suggest that AI investment will continue to contribute to future overall investment growth.
AI sentiment among U.S. public firms
This section details the methodology for measuring corporate sentiment towards Artificial Intelligence using textual analysis of quarterly earnings call transcripts. Key phrases related to AI, large language models (LLMs), machine learning, and neural networks are identified, and the sentiment is quantified by the balance of positive and negative words. A firm is classified as 'AI positive' if its sentiment significantly exceeds the average. The analysis reveals a substantial increase in AI-positive firms, growing from almost zero in 2016 to nearly 25% by the third quarter of 2025. This trend reflects a broader adoption and positive outlook towards AI among publicly traded companies, including major players like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google, Nvidia, Apple, and Tesla, aligning with surveys showing increased AI usage among large firms.
Investments by AI-positive public firms
The article examines investment trends by categorizing public firms based on their AI sentiment. Using data from S&P Global Compustat on capital expenditure (CapEx) and research and development (R&D), it compares the investment growth rates of AI-positive firms against non-AI-positive firms. Initially, AI-positive firms exhibited lower investment growth in 2023. However, this trend dramatically reversed, with AI-positive firms showing approximately 25 percentage points higher overall investment growth than their non-AI-positive counterparts in the first three quarters of 2025. A similar pattern was observed for R&D investment, indicating a significant shift towards AI-driven capital allocation since early 2024. This highlights AI's increasing influence on corporate investment strategies.
Dominance of mega firms
This section delves into the specific sources of investment growth within the AI-positive firm category, differentiating between the largest firms (top 1 percentile by assets) and smaller ones. The findings clearly demonstrate that the bulk of the investment contribution comes from these mega-firms. Specifically, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta are identified as the primary drivers. Their investment growth is concentrated in critical information technology infrastructure and data centers, directly addressing the escalating demand for AI infrastructure. While smaller AI-positive firms do not contribute as much directly to investment growth, their widespread adoption and application of AI for innovation, product development, and customer experience are crucial, as they generate the demand that incentivizes the mega-firms' large-scale infrastructure investments.
Potential implications
The analysis of AI's impact on investment carries several important implications. Firstly, the concentrated nature of large-scale AI infrastructure investment means that a small number of prominent firms bear significant financial risk. Should the optimistic forecasts for AI service demand fail to materialize, these firms would incur substantial costs. Secondly, the reliance of smaller firms on the AI infrastructure provided by these larger entities, due to the high fixed costs associated with developing and training AI models, could lead to greater efficiency by reducing redundant expenditures. However, this market concentration also raises concerns about potential anti-competitive practices, as it could grant these dominant companies excessive market power, potentially affecting the pricing of AI services and subsequently hindering broader AI adoption and overall productivity gains across industries.
Conclusion
The article concludes by affirming Artificial Intelligence as a pivotal driver of the robust U.S. economic investment growth observed in 2025. The research robustly demonstrates that this accelerated investment is predominantly fueled by major AI infrastructure projects undertaken by the largest, most AI-optimistic firms. These substantial investments are a direct response to both current and anticipated future demand for AI-powered products and services, originating from a diverse range of smaller AI-positive businesses and individual consumers. With the continued strong positive sentiment and growth expectations expressed by these leading firms, the authors project that AI will maintain its critical role as a significant contributor to the overall investment expansion in the U.S. economy throughout 2026.
