a16z and Goldman Sachs report: AI investment hits new high, U.S. construction industry productivity stagnates

ME News Message, April 11 (UTC+8). Recently, a16z released data showing that global venture capital investment reached $300 billion in the first quarter of 2026, setting a new record. Of that amount, about 80% flowed to AI companies. The combined funding of four companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Waymo—totaled $188 billion, accounting for 65% of the total. Even after excluding these mega deals, investment still amounted to $112 billion. Funding in the early stage increased by 41% year over year, seed round funding grew by 31%, but the number of deals fell by 30%. The article’s view is that the current AI technology cycle differs from cloud computing and mobile internet: it involves hardware infrastructure, reflecting a shift from “bits” to “atoms.”

On the other hand, research from Goldman Sachs indicates that since 1950, overall U.S. economic labor productivity has grown by about two times, but productivity in the construction industry has stagnated, even slightly below the level from 75 years ago. The article attributes the reasons to factors including the fact that the industry basically stopped adopting new technologies starting in the 1960s, with most major machinery and equipment already existing since the 1950s; as a result, it did not benefit from spillover innovations in computing or communications. In addition, increased land-use regulations lowered annual productivity growth by 0.7 percentage points. The fundamental reason for the stagnation in construction industry productivity remains widely debated within the industry. (Source: InFoQ)