In just three years, Nvidia’s market value has surged from less than $300 billion to more than $5 trillion, creating more wealth than the entire annual economic output of Germany. OpenAI, founded barely a decade ago, is now privately valued at about $850 billion.
Meanwhile, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and other technology giants are expected to spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone – roughly equal to the annual gross domestic product of Switzerland. In case anyone did not notice, we are witnessing one of the greatest wealth-creation events in modern history.
PwC estimates that artificial intelligence could add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Goldman Sachs forecasts that AI could increase global GDP by 7 per cent over the next decade, creating almost $7 trillion in additional economic output. Never before has so much wealth appeared poised to be generated so quickly by so few companies.
However, most discussions about AI focus on jobs or ethics. Which professions will disappear? Which skills will remain valuable? Who should govern AI? How should governments prepare workers for the future? These are important questions. But they may not be the most important ones.
The real question is what will determine the wealth of nations in the age of AI, and therefore, who will run the world in the coming century.
For the past two centuries, countries became prosperous by increasing the productivity of their people. Adam Smith’s central insight in The Wealth of Nations was that human labour, combined with capital and innovation, was the foundation of national prosperity. Countries grew richer by educating citizens, building industries, creating jobs and connecting workers to larger markets.
China became the world’s factory. India became the world’s back office. The Philippines became a global hub for customer-service operations. Eastern Europe emerged as a centre for software development and business services. Millions entered the middle class because globalisation connected human talent with global demand.
AI is beginning to challenge that model and revisit all its assumptions.
For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, we are seeing the emergence of a technology capable of generating extraordinary economic value while requiring remarkably little human labour. AI does more than just automate physical tasks; it also automates cognitive work. It writes software, drafts legal documents, conducts research, analyses contracts, creates content and performs many of the tasks once carried out by highly educated professionals.
If companies need fewer programmers, fewer analysts, fewer customer-service representatives and fewer administrative staff, then many of the competitive advantages that countries spent decades building may begin to erode. The traditional development playbook – educate workers, attract investment and integrate into global value chains – may no longer be sufficient if those value chains increasingly require fewer workers.
This is why the AI revolution is not merely a technology story. It is a competitiveness story, a development story, and increasingly, a geopolitical story.
The countries that prosper in the coming decades may not necessarily be those with the largest populations or the cheapest labour. They may be those that own the infrastructure, platforms and assets that power the intelligence economy.
History offers a useful guide. The industrial age rewarded countries that owned factories and machinery. The oil age rewarded countries that controlled energy resources. The digital age rewarded countries that built platforms, networks and intellectual property.
The AI age is creating a new set of strategic assets: advanced semiconductors, data centres, computing power, proprietary models, energy infrastructure and highly specialised talent.
Consider South Korea. Recently, the country’s presidential policy chief floated the idea of an “AI dividend”, arguing that citizens should benefit from the extraordinary gains generated by its AI and semiconductor industries. The proposal sparked fierce debate, but it highlighted a profound point. South Korea occupies a critical position in the global AI supply chain through companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix. As demand for AI accelerates, so does the value generated by Korean technology. The debate is not fundamentally about redistribution. It is about ownership.
That may become the defining economic question of our time. The countries that own the chips, the models, the data centres and the energy systems will capture a disproportionate share of the wealth being created. Those that merely consume AI may find themselves increasingly dependent on technologies developed elsewhere.
A new hierarchy of nations may be emerging. At the top will be countries that own critical AI infrastructure and intellectual property. Beneath them will be countries that use AI to enhance productivity and competitiveness. Further down may be nations that become consumers of intelligence rather than producers of it.
The race is no longer simply for talent, trade or investment. It is increasingly a race for ownership of intelligence itself. In January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos that countries caught between Washington and Beijing needed to stop negotiating alone. “If we’re not at the table,” he said, “we’re on the menu.” In the age of AI, that warning may apply to nations everywhere. A new geoeconomic age has begun.
