Business of Tech: Daily 10-Minute IT Services Insights

Goldman Sachs Reports $700B AI Spend Yields No US GDP Growth; 40% of AI Projects Face Cancellation

Feb 25, 2026
A tight look at why $700B in AI spending barely moved US GDP and how imports and infrastructure vendors soaked up the gains. Discussion of why AI projects often stall or get cancelled due to poor planning and fractured data. Coverage of channel consolidation as big consultancies partner with model providers, plus an AWS outage that highlights agentic AI liability risks.
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INSIGHT

$700B AI Spend Produced No Measurable GDP Gain

  • Goldman Sachs found $700 billion of 2025 AI investment contributed basically zero to U.S. GDP growth.
  • Most AI equipment was imported and spending shifted margins to infrastructure vendors, not distributed productivity gains.
INSIGHT

Agentic AI Projects Face High Cancellation Rates

  • Gartner predicts 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled and S&P Global finds 42% abandoned before production.
  • Cancellation reasons include rush deployments, weak infrastructure, and high inference costs limiting scale.
INSIGHT

Data Fractures Block AI Returns

  • Apptio reports 90% of IT leaders now question AI ROI and 80% cite fragmented data as the primary barrier.
  • AI readiness is data normalization, cost instrumentation, and governance—not merely model deployment.
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