J
ust over three years after its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has reached 800 million active users. This meteoric rise has been much faster than that of TikTok, which, a decade after its 2016 creation, boasts 1.6 billion users, and also faster than WhatsApp, which has two billion users, 17 years after its launch. Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly transforming both professional practices and everyday life for users worldwide. And the changes are far from over.
AI is currently the main driver of growth in the United States. Since the beginning of 2025, nearly all of this growth has come from investments in AI, which in recent years have contributed to an annual growth of nearly half a percentage point. Echoing the findings of the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness, a note published by the Banque de France in February 2025 indicated that this is largely why Europe has fallen behind, with stagnating productivity, while American growth has accelerated.
This dynamic has not yet run its course. On the contrary, all indications suggest it will continue. The investment bank Goldman Sachs, for example, predicts that capital spending will exceed $500 billion this year. That figure – around 1.7% of gross domestic product – is comparable to the major investment booms of the past, such as those of the late 1990s. It may even surpass those levels when other tech capital expenditures, especially investments in software, are included.
