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Supercomputers merge with AI race

Ay A lex Irwin-Huntb From fDi Graph Time

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A midweek dose of data on trade, investment and economic development

Supercomputer ‘exascale’ era merges with private AI race

Supercomputers are critical to national competitiveness. They enable everything from scientific research into climatic patterns to training of cutting-edge AI models. In recent years, the landscape of the world’s most powerful computers has shifted. Once the preserve of governments, new computing clusters are increasingly built by the private sector. Countries like China have also stopped publicly disclosing the performance of their most powerful machines amid geopolitical tensions. As the AI race continues apace, public data on the world’s top supercomputers is becoming more scarce

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More on supercomputers and AI

BY THE NUMBERS
$1.5tn
Investment pledges from the EU, Japan and South Korea as part of US trade deals.

27%
Appreciation of the Costa Rican colon against the dollar in the past three years.
DATA DISPATCH
Our FDI data for the first half of 2025 is live. Between January and June, foreign investors pledged more than $700bn to cross-border projects worldwide, according to preliminary data from fDi Markets. Digitisation stands out as the main driver of investment plans so far this year, with data centres and semiconductors leading the charge. Despite these digital sectors’ need for huge amounts of energy, there are signs that investor interest into renewables like wind and hydrogen is waning. Explore the full matrix here.

HAVE YOUR SAY 

Our data trends are being discussed on social media. Check out Anand Rao‘s comment on last week’s story about the UK’s growing ‘compute gap’. Will public-private partnerships be enough to develop more sovereign AI and quantum infrastructure? Join the conversation by giving your take on LinkedInX or get in touch at [email protected].

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