The AI boom reshapes global markets

Date

29 October 2025

Category

Economy & trade

Region

United States / Global

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The generative-AI boom became a dominant force in global markets in the mid-2020s, concentrating trillions of dollars of value in a handful of technology firms.

Following the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, surging demand for the specialised chips that train and run large AI models turned the US firm Nvidia into the world's most valuable company, its market value crossing four trillion and then five trillion dollars in 2025, a scale no company had reached before. Massive capital spending on data centres, energy, and semiconductors by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and a wave of startups such as OpenAI drove record stock-market highs, even as sceptics warned of a speculative bubble reminiscent of the dot-com era. A January 2025 selloff sparked by China's low-cost DeepSeek model briefly wiped hundreds of billions from AI stocks, underscoring the sector's volatility. The boom reordered the global economy around artificial intelligence, raising urgent questions about productivity, employment, energy demand, and the concentration of technological and financial power.

Related economy & trade events

• Trump's 'Liberation Day' reciprocal tariffs and global market crash
  2-9 April 2025
• The global financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers
  15 September 2008
• China's Reform and Opening-Up Begins Under Deng Xiaoping
  December 18, 1978
• The global inflation surge
  2021–2023 (peak June 2022)
• The US-China trade war begins
  6 July 2018
• The collapse of Venezuela
  c. 2016–2019 (Venezuelan collapse)

Further reading

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

The wider story

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Peter Frankopan

Best-selling world history told through the trade routes that moved goods, faiths and ideas.

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