Economics | 2 min read | February 2026
AI is estimated to have contributed approximately 2pp to Asia's GDP growth in 2025, accounting for half of total growth, primarily through trade
Rising AI demand has been a key driver of Asia’s growth since 2025, but how much has it contributed to the region’s GDP growth? Making quantitative estimates is difficult because there is no separate statistical AI classification in official data. To fill this void, Nomura economists take an alternate route.
We map three channels through which Asia benefits from rising AI demand: trade, investment and consumption. We estimate its contribution to real GDP growth using the expenditure approach, decomposing its impact into net exports, investment and private consumption. For each component, we calculate AI’s contribution as the year-on-year change in AI-related real activity, expressed as a share of the previous year’s real GDP.
AI’s rising share in Asia’s GDP growth
In 2024, AI contributed only 0.26pp to Asia’s real GDP growth of 4.1% y-o-y, but that rose to 2.01pp in 2025, suggesting half of Asia’s growth for the year was AI-driven. In several economies, the AI contribution in 2025 partly or fully offset negative non-AI growth, preventing an outright contraction. This contrasts with 2024, when AI largely acted as an incremental upside rather than a stabilizing force.
In the last two years, AI-related net exports were the single largest contributor to AI-driven growth, particularly in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore, reflecting Asia’s role in global AI hardware and intermediate goods supply chains. Thailand’s gains appear to have been driven by higher AI-related net exports, while in India and Indonesia, where growth remains dominated by non-AI demand, AI contribution is negligible or negative.
Higher AI-related exports are gradually spilling into capex, with machinery and equipment investment on the rise. Data center construction, however, does not appear to be a significant growth driver yet, except in Malaysia and Singapore, which highlights their emergence as regional AI infrastructure hubs.
Better estimates as more data become available
The importance of AI is growing across Asia, primarily through trade. We expect data centers to become a more important driver of AI growth in the coming years.
AI development is still in its early stages, and the technology will continue to diffuse across different aspects of our lives. As more data become available, we aim to regularly update these estimates, as they provide a framework for quantifying which economies are most exposed to the AI cycle, both on the upside and downside.
For our full methodology and analysis, read the full report.
Chief Economist, India and Asia ex-Japan
Economist, Asia ex-Japan
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