​US inflation has oscillated between roughly 3.5% and 2% since the beginning of 2025, reflecting a push-and-pull between easing goods inflation, slower shelter disinflation, and still-resilient services driven by wage growth and consumption, while energy and food prices added intermittent volatility rather than a sustained trend. Looking ahead, we expect headline inflation to average around 2.5% through 2025, with downside risks toward 1.5% if goods deflation accelerates and shelter inflation cools faster than expected, and upside risks toward 4% should wage pressures, energy prices, or renewed supply-side disruptions re-emerge. The labour market has begun to soften, with unemployment gradually rising but still remaining low by historical standards, signalling cooling rather than distress; we anticipate a further modest uptick before a stabilisation and subsequent decline into the 2026 midterm election cycle as policy easing and fiscal dynamics support activity. On monetary policy, the Federal Reserve delivered rate cuts across 2024 and 2025, bringing the policy rate to around 3.75%, though the easing cycle was notably delayed as policymakers prioritised confidence that inflation pressures were durably contained. Despite a more hawkish tone in recent communications, we expect up to three additional cuts in 2026 as growth moderates and inflation converges toward target, a year that will also be institutionally significant given that the leadership decision regarding Jerome Powell’s succession is scheduled for 2026, potentially shaping the medium-term policy outlook. Figure 1 summarizes the recent developments and expectations for 2026.

Artificial intelligence has become a central pillar of global technology investment, reshaping capital allocation across both public and private markets. The rapid scaling of large-language models, enterprise AI deployment and data-intensive applications has driven a sustained surge in demand for compute, storage and network capacity. As a result, capital has increasingly concentrated around the physical infrastructure required to support AI at scale, elevating data centres from a cyclical IT spend category to a structurally strategic asset class within the global investment landscape.
From a market perspective, global data-centre investment reached approximately $290 billion in 2024 and is forecast to rise to around $490 billion in 2025, implying growth of close to 70% YoY. This acceleration materially outpaces broader IT spending and reflects a sharp increase in capital intensity rather than just incremental capacity additions. Looking further ahead, industry estimates suggest the market is set to expand at around 23% compound annual growth rate through 2030, underpinned by sustained hyperscaler capex, accelerating enterprise demand for AI-enabled workloads and continued geographic expansion of compute infrastructure.