#corporate-investment

#corporate-investment

Speaking on the Goldman Sachs Exchanges podcast on Jan. 20, ahead of his trip to Davos, Solomon described a business landscape defined by a sharp dichotomy. On one side, the macroeconomic setup for 2026 is "pretty good for risk assets and for markets," fueled by a "confluence of very stimulative actions," including monetary easing and a massive capital investment boom in AI infrastructure. On the other, executives are grappling with anxiety about inconsistent policymaking and geopolitical "noise."

Well, that actually is a better segue to this next chart I was going to show you than I thought it would be, which is there's some suspicions going around that this whole thing has become a kind of circular money machine, that the hunt for growth, the hunt for justifying share prices and investment and valuations is leading to just money constantly passing hands to create the almost appearance of activity.

Not so long ago, post-pandemic, it felt like the office age was over. The morning commute disappeared, dining tables became desks and London's tallest buildings stood half empty. The story was simple: no one would return, and the old way of working was gone for good. Yet here we are in 2025, watching cranes swing back into action over the capital. Global giants are laying down serious roots again. And instead of shrinking, London's office footprint is expanding in ways that would have been hard to imagine during lockdown.

I think the big companies are betting on it causing massive job replacement by AI, because that's where the big money is going to be,

Yet some analysts are saying that you should believe the hype. They argue: Corporate demand for AI tools is real and growing. AI build-out is being funded by hard cash from tech company balance sheets, not risky debt. Stock valuations are not as extreme as they were in the dotcom crash of 2000. And even if a crash in AI did happen, the fallout wouldn't tip the U.S. into recession.

Google has officially opened the doors of its $1 billion data center in the UK, part of a £5 billion investment into local infrastructure and the tech giant's first data center in the country. The opening of the data center in Waltham Cross, in Broxbourne on the edge of London, comes as US President Donald Trump is set to arrive in the UK for a state visit