US economic data is missing an Nvidia-sized piece of the AI boom

Epoch AI argues that the way the United States measures its economy is quietly missing a large and growing piece of the AI boom. The problem sits with Nvidia and other fabless chipmakers. They design their chips in the US but have them manufactured in Asia, and many of the finished products are sold to buyers outside the US without ever crossing a US border. Customs paperwork only records goods that physically move through the country, so a big share of Nvidia's value added never shows up as an export in the national accounts.

The numbers are already meaningful. Epoch estimates that recent US GDP growth has been understated by about 0.3 percentage points, and that the gap could widen to nearly 2 percentage points by the end of 2028 if Nvidia keeps growing. For scale, Nvidia booked roughly $120 billion in US operating income over the year to January 2026, and US investment in computing equipment has jumped to around $400 billion a year, close to triple its 2023 level. Epoch attributes about $140 billion of the missing value to the semiconductor industry.

The full analysis walks through the accounting mechanics. The short version is that official statistics were built for a world where value and physical goods travel together, and AI hardware breaks that assumption.

Why it matters

If you use GDP figures to judge how much AI is adding to the economy, you are probably reading a number that is too low, and the gap grows each quarter. Investors and policymakers weighing the cost of the AI build-out against its real output should treat the headline growth rate as a floor, not the full picture.