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

ME News update: On April 11 (UTC+8), a16z recently released data showing that global venture capital investment reached $300 billion in the first quarter of 2026, setting a record high, with about 80% flowing 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 reached $112 billion. Early-stage funding rose 41% year over year, seed-round funding increased by 31%, but the number of deals fell by 30%. The article’s viewpoint 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 the fact that, starting in the 1960s, there was essentially a halt in adopting new technologies; most machinery and major equipment have existed since the 1950s and have not benefited from spillover innovations in computing or communications; and the increase in 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)