Despite the headlines, hype, and multi-trillion-dollar valuations tied to artificial intelligence, a new economic report suggests that AI was far from the dominant force that drove U.S. growth in 2025.

While AI investment captured investor attention and reshaped corporate priorities, the economy’s real backbone remained household spending, imports-adjusted domestic investment, and traditional drivers of consumption.

Macro Research Board Partners, an economic research platform, published the report in January, authored by strategist Prajakta Bhide. The research directly challenges the popular narrative that the U.S. economy’s growth is narrowly concentrated in AI and thus highly vulnerable to a sector-specific downturn.

“In short, without an AI boom, there would have certainly been less GDP growth last year, but there would also have been fewer imports, so that overall real growth would still have been decent,” Bhide wrote.

Consumers Remain the True Engine of Growth

Personal consumption — spending by households — remained the primary driver of GDP in 2025, even as aggregate income growth slowed and job gains remained modest. “Consumers continue to be the backbone of the economy,” Bhide told Business Insider. “There is a divide between what consumers say they feel and what they say that they’re going to do versus what they actually go and do.”

Despite cautious sentiment, households continued to spend, helping sustain overall economic growth.

This distinction is important because much of the AI-driven investment surge is in imported hardware, including high-performance computing chips, servers, networking equipment, and specialized data-center infrastructure. While these expenditures are significant, they do not directly add to GDP. After adjusting for imports, AI’s contribution to growth is substantially smaller than market perception might suggest.

AI as a Secondary, Not Primary, Driver

The report emphasizes that AI contributed to GDP mostly through software development, cloud-based services, and other domestic investment, while the physical infrastructure side — data centers, imported servers, fiber-optic networks, and GPUs — had a negligible net contribution to GDP.

“Although a negative shock to the optimism around AI implies a risk to GDP growth,” Bhide wrote, “the more realistic (and smaller) estimate of AI’s growth impact after adjusting for imports dispels the popular notion that the U.S. economy would falter without it.”

Historically, recessions are rarely triggered by a pullback in consumer spending before job losses occur. Business Insider has noted that consumer spending tends to weaken after economic downturns take hold, suggesting that fears of an AI-induced collapse might overstate the risk.

Corporate and Market Implications

The report also indirectly touches on stock-market dynamics. The U.S. tech giants driving the AI hype — including Nvidia, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple — are collectively valued at roughly $22 trillion. Much of the perceived economic risk associated with AI is linked to market volatility in these companies rather than a direct GDP effect. Analysts have noted that even if AI-related enthusiasm were to cool sharply, the broader economy is unlikely to collapse, given the deep, stable reliance on consumer spending and diversified corporate investments.

Bhide’s analysis also highlights the structural difference between AI investment and traditional GDP contributors. While AI spending can be large, it is concentrated among a handful of firms and sectors, creating what she calls “narrowly concentrated” growth. By contrast, personal consumption spans nearly all households, making it far less volatile as an economic stabilizer.

The findings also carry important implications for policymakers and investors. While government and private investment in AI remains strategically important, supporting national competitiveness, technological leadership, and high-value job creation, fears that AI alone underpins U.S. economic growth appear overstated. Infrastructure investment in AI and advanced computing will continue to reshape industry, but the economy’s resilience remains anchored in everyday consumer behavior.

Moreover, understanding the limited GDP contribution of imported hardware helps clarify the economic trade-offs of AI investment. Trillions of dollars may flow into advanced equipment, but the direct domestic contribution is modest until associated services, software, and manufacturing are scaled. The report suggests that a recalibration of expectations around AI’s macroeconomic impact may be warranted, with consumer spending continuing to play a leading role in sustaining U.S. growth.

While AI’s transformative potential in sectors from cloud computing to autonomous systems is undeniable, Bhide’s report makes it clear that the U.S. economy is not precariously balanced on algorithms and data centers. Consumers remained the true engine of growth in 2025, and AI’s GDP impact, though meaningful, was secondary.

The real risk from an AI slowdown lies more in financial markets and investor sentiment than in the underlying economy. The report’s findings suggest that even if the AI hype bubble were to deflate, the broader economy would likely continue to grow, albeit at a more measured pace. Policymakers, investors, and corporate leaders would be wise to distinguish between AI-driven market excitement and the fundamental drivers of economic resilience.