Trend AI take-off and unprecedented data-centre build-out

Summary

The report sees AI development taking off sharply, with the big technology firms competing to become the largest and most successful players in generative AI. Agentic AI, which plans on its own and makes decisions and carries out tasks with minimal human involvement, is highlighted as a key development. This race channels huge sums into AI infrastructure, and data centres are going up on an unprecedented scale to supply the vast computing power AI needs. Data centres consume very large amounts of energy and demand major investment, and capital spending in the sector has almost doubled since early 2025. The report regards the location of computing capacity, energy and data centres as a matter of power and of where activity settles. In its introduction it judges that the exponential rise in compute and usage and the billions flowing into firms, models and data centres carry consequences for both competitiveness and security.