Business spending on computers and software added 1.0 points to Q3 2026 GDP growth; imports of computers and chips subtracted 1.5

Q1 How much did the AI-related lines add to Q3 2026 growth?

BEA’s accounts have no “AI” category. AI spending is booked inside broader lines: servers in computers and peripherals, models and platforms in software, data centers in commercial structures, and grid work in power structures. Most AI hardware is built abroad, so it also shows up as imports, which GDP subtracts. Each line is shown on its own; none of these lines is all AI, and the page does not add them into an “AI share of growth”.

BEA publishes contributions only for GDP’s main components. These are computed with BEA’s own chain-type contribution formula from BEA’s price and quantity indexes (tables 5.3.3–5.3.5 and 4.2.3B–4.2.5B); the same calculation reproduces every contribution BEA does publish for the last 12 quarters within 0.04 points. Imported computers can also be resold, held in inventory or used by consumers, so an import line is not a measure of AI investment.

Q2 Where did the hardware dollars go?

In current dollars at annual rates, business investment in computers and peripherals rose $84B in Q3 2026, to $504B. Imports of computers, peripherals and parts rose $150B, to $751B. In the same quarter inventories added +1.61pp to growth; BEA’s first estimate does not show which goods were stocked.

Q3 How fast is data center construction growing?

Census’s monthly construction spending has carried a data center line since January 2014. Private spending on data centers ran at a $85.0B annual rate in August 2026 (preliminary), +73.2% from a year earlier. Census files data centers under office construction, where they are now 63% of the total.

Q4 What are the biggest spenders paying?

Cash spent on property and equipment, as each company reported it to the SEC in its latest 10-Q or 10-K. These are worldwide figures for each company’s own fiscal quarter, they include land, buildings and non-AI equipment, and they leave out assets taken on through finance leases. They are not U.S. GDP: the BEA lines above count only spending in the U.S., and the chips and servers inside these figures are largely imported.

Quarters are each company’s own fiscal quarters (Oracle’s ends in February, May, August and November; Nvidia’s in late January, April, July and October). Where a 10-Q reports only year-to-date cash flows, the quarter is the difference between two year-to-date figures; where both exist they were checked against each other. Not yet filed for the quarter BEA covers: Amazon, Oracle, CoreWeave, Nvidia.

Q5 How much of consumer spending was health care?

Health care services added +0.56pp to Q3 2026 GDP growth, out of +2.52pp from all consumer spending. They are 17.3% of consumer spending and 11.7% of GDP. BEA counts health care in consumer spending no matter who pays the bill: care paid by Medicare, Medicaid or an employer’s insurance is booked as household spending. In Q3 2026, Medicare benefits ran at $1,341B and Medicaid at $1,098B a year, together equal to 63% of the health care services line (it was 56% in Q4 2019). That ratio is not exactly the government-paid share: Medicare’s drug benefit pays for medicines, which BEA counts as goods, not services. From a year earlier, Medicare benefits are up 10.7%, Medicaid 3.3% and health care spending 6.7%, all in current dollars.

Census estimates 4,224,112 Americans were 64 and 4,249,243 were 61 on July 1, 2025. Over the following year that is about 11,573 people a day reaching 65, the Medicare age, and about 11,642 a day reaching 62, the earliest Social Security age (before deaths during the year). 64.6 million people, 18.9% of the population, were 65 or older.