Global intangible investment over US$ 10 trillion for first time, growing three times faster than tangible investment

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

Investment in intangible assets crossed the US$10 trillion mark for the first time in 2025, according to new figures from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Italy's Luiss Business School (LBS) in the just published third edition of the World Intangible Investment Highlights.

The United States alone accounted for nearly half of the total, as investments in intangibles like software, data, brands and other intellectual property-backed assets rose, while spending on tangibles like machinery and buildings slowed under tight financing conditions and economic uncertainty.

The latest World Intangible Investment Highlights covers 29 high- and middle-income economies, together accounting for about 57% of world GDP, adding the first-ever estimates for Canada and the Philippines and updated figures for Brazil, India and Japan.

Intangible investment grew 5.5% annually between 2020 and 2025, compared with 3.2% for tangible investment. It now accounts for nearly 13% of GDP across the economies covered.

WIPO Director General Daren Tang said:

“This record-breaking rise in intangible asset investment clearly shows that global economic value is shifting from physical assets to intangible assets. This cuts across both mature and emerging economies.”

“This data shows that countries and businesses are increasingly turning to innovation, technology and creativity to drive growth. I hope that the report gives decision makers insights into these trends and help them put in place the right policies, practices and programs to support their innovators and creators.”

Companies and government entities in the United States of America (US) invested nearly US$5 trillion in intangibles in 2025, by far the most of any economy that was studied. The gap between the US and the next four economies combined has roughly doubled over the past decade, from about US$1 trillion in 2015 to US$2 trillion in 2025.

Newly revised data show Japanese firms and government entities investing US$810 billion in intangibles in 2024, placing the country second globally, ahead of Germany at US$695 billion. Japan's rise to second place marks a clear change in its investment mix: while its tangible investment is now stagnating, its intangible investment grew 4.8% in 2024, faster than in other major high-income economies such as the US, Germany and France.

The report also sheds new light on intangible investment in emerging economies. For the first time, official data show intangible investment growing strongly beyond high-income countries. In India and the Philippines, intangible investment grew 5.3% and 3.9% annually over the past decade, respectively, exceeding the growth recorded in several high-income economies. Brazil ranks among the world’s largest intangible investors, with US$312 billion invested in 2023.

AI's two investment waves

The report highlights how artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating investment through two distinct waves.

The first is a tangible, infrastructure-driven wave of data centres, semiconductors, power systems and networks required to run advanced AI models. This phase has been stronger than expected and is helping to revive tangible investment but remains geographically concentrated, particularly visible in the US.

The second is a broader wave of intangible investment, as firms invest in data, software, R&D, brands, organizational capital and training. As with previous general-purpose technologies, the report notes that AI’s lasting economic impact will come less from the physical infrastructure wave than from the intangible assets built on top of it.

The US occupies a central role in both AI-related investment waves, combining scale with growth across both tangible and intangible investment. At the same time, the AI boom coincides with continued strong growth in US intangible investment, including software, data and organizational capital, which grew by 4.4% in real terms between 2024 and 2025.

While the precise contribution of AI to this increase cannot be isolated, the report discusses multiple channels through which AI may be influencing intangible investment dynamics.

Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, Professor, Luiss Business School, and co-author of the report, said:

“AI is not just a new technology. It is changing how knowledge itself is produced, making intangible investment the key to understanding its economic impact. AI runs on intangibles like data, software and organizational know-how, and it reinforces them: it makes them cheaper to produce, widens the range of activities they can transform, and in doing so encourages firms to invest even more in them. Yet much of this investment, particularly organizational capital, brands and training, still goes unrecorded in official statistics. Without better measurement of these assets, we will keep underestimating what AI actually contributes to our economies and miss the policies needed to make the most of it.”

The report has been produced under the WIPO–LBS Partnership on Intangible Assets in the Global Economy. Its underlying Global INTAN-Invest Database tracks investment across all intangible asset classes, including those outside official statistics, giving businesses and policymakers a fuller picture of the drivers of growth in modern economies.