Industry signals
What changed across the profession.
Global FDI rebounded to $1.6T, but narrowly
Foreign direct investment rose 14% in 2025 to an estimated $1.6 trillion, UNCTAD reports. Much of the lift ran through conduit hubs (the UK, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Ireland) rather than into new productive capacity, so the headline overstates real activity.
UNCTAD Global Investment Trends Monitor No. 50Europe's inflows jumped 56%
FDI into the European Union grew 56%, with Germany, France, and Italy leading on the back of recovering cross-border M&A. Developed economies overall pulled in 43% more, to $728 billion.
UNCTADData centers took more than a fifth of greenfield
Announced data-center FDI topped $270 billion, over one fifth of all greenfield project value, led by France, the United States, and Korea, with Brazil, India, Thailand, and Malaysia also landing major projects.
UNCTADThe critical-minerals bloc is taking shape
Washington signed eleven new bilateral minerals frameworks, from Argentina and Guinea to the Philippines and Uzbekistan, and stood up FORGE, the successor to the Minerals Security Partnership, mobilizing more than $30 billion in financing in six months to build China-light supply chains.
CSISResource-rich states are capturing more value at home
Mineral-rich states across Africa and Latin America are using their leverage to capture more value at home as a US-led preferential trading zone, pitched to more than 50 countries, forms to price out non-members.
Foreign PolicyFirm-level wins still landing at SelectUSA
Among 2026 SelectUSA announcements: French bioengineering firm CTIBIOTECH is opening a North American HQ in Greater Philadelphia, and Kazakhstan's BAUNER picked Edna, Texas for an aluminum-extrusion plant. The mid-market reshoring pipeline keeps moving while megaprojects dominate the headlines.
Business FacilitiesThe hottest 'sector' in FDI is a building full of servers
AI infrastructure is the largest single driver of new foreign investment, and it has changed what investment attraction agencies compete on.
The most important shift in last year's global investment map was a building type. Data centers pulled in more than $270 billion in announced FDI in 2025, over a fifth of all greenfield project value, and greenfield commitments to the sector rose by roughly $125 billion in a single year. No other category grew anything like as fast.
That capital is concentrated. France, the United States, and the Republic of Korea led on host volume, with a second tier of major projects landing in Brazil, India, Thailand, and Malaysia. For everyone else, the practical question is what part of this wave they can realistically capture.
A data center is capital-heavy and job-light. The decisive factors are firm power availability, grid-connection timelines, water for cooling, and permitting speed. Several of 2025's largest projects moved on the promise of megawatts and a connection date, not headline incentives, and stalled where the grid could not deliver.
It is also increasingly an economic-statecraft question. AI infrastructure investment is now fused with industrial policy and national security: where compute gets sited, who owns it, and which chips run inside it are screened and steered by governments. Investment-promotion conversations now run straight into energy policy and security review.
The same boom is widening the global divide. Flows to developed economies jumped 43% in 2025 while developing economies slipped 2%, and three quarters of least-developed countries saw stagnant or falling inflows. The strategic, technology-driven capital is pooling where the grid, talent, and policy certainty already are.
Year-on-year change in FDI inflows by economy group, 2025. Source: UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Global Investment Trends Monitor No. 50.
Practice implications
- ◆Audit your power and grid story before your incentives. For data-center prospects, megawatts available and a credible connection date beat tax credits.
- ◆Build the value case on tax base, connectivity, and anchor effects rather than headcount. These projects create few permanent jobs.
- ◆If hyperscale is out of reach, target edge and colocation facilities and the surrounding supply chain: power, cooling, and fiber.
- ◆Treat AI-infrastructure deals as economic statecraft. Expect national-security screening and energy-policy entanglement, and staff for it.
Sources
- UNCTAD: Global Investment Trends Monitor No. 50
- UNCTAD: Data centres are reshaping the global investment landscape
- UNCTAD: Global foreign investment up 14% in 2025
- CSIS: New Executive Order Ties U.S. Critical Minerals Security to Global Partnerships
- Foreign Policy: Countries With Critical Minerals Seek to Capitalize on Trade Boom
- Business Facilities: FDI Roundup: Life Sciences, Tech, Metals Investments
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