A month after dropping out of a Stanford College PhD programme within the spring of final yr, Demi Guo and her pal Chenlin Meng had raised $5mn for his or her start-up.
The app they created, Pika Artwork, makes use of AI to supply wild video results and threatens to make at the least one side of conventional video and movie manufacturing a factor of the previous. Inside just a few months, it had greater than one million customers whereas the 2 founders, each aged 26, raised $135mn in simply over a yr.
Their story could be distinctive wherever outdoors Silicon Valley, and is uncommon even there. However California’s famed community of mentors, innovators and traders helped make it doable, they clarify. With traders, “there was mutual enthusiasm from the start”, Guo says, explaining that they “brainstorm ideas with us, help with recruiting and more. If I run into a problem, I can just text them, and they’re immediately helpful.”
For a lot of economists, Guo and Meng’s success helps clarify one thing else: why the US is rising a lot sooner than another superior economic system. Its GDP has expanded by 11.4 per cent for the reason that finish of 2019 and in its newest forecast, the IMF predicted US development at 2.8 per cent this yr.
Whereas final month’s US election was fought in opposition to a backdrop of the price of dwelling disaster, the nation’s financial efficiency lately has been the envy of the developed world.
The US might have been much less affected by the warfare in Ukraine than Europe, owing to its considerable home vitality provides, and rebounded extra rapidly than some G7 nations from Covid. However its development report is rooted in sooner productiveness development — a extra enduring driver of financial efficiency.
US labour productiveness has grown by 30 per cent for the reason that 2008-09 monetary disaster, greater than 3 times the tempo within the Eurozone and the UK. That productiveness hole, seen for a decade, is reshaping the hierarchy of the worldwide economic system. Financial development within the Eurozone has been a 3rd of the US’s for the reason that pandemic, and output is about to develop by simply 0.8 per cent this yr, based on the IMF.
Equally, the economies of Japan and the UK have grown solely by 3 per cent over the previous 5 years. In actual fact, in productiveness development the US is quickly outstripping virtually all superior economies, a lot of that are caught in a spiral of low development, weakening dwelling requirements, strained public funds and impaired geopolitical affect.
Within the UK, the brand new Labour authorities has promised a “decade of renewal” to resolve what economists have referred to as “the productivity puzzle”. Addressing low productiveness development is the IMF’s key suggestion for Japan, whereas a landmark report printed in September by Mario Draghi, a former president of the European Central Financial institution, described weak competitiveness as an “existential challenge” for the EU.
Donald Trump will inherit a booming US economic system when he enters the White Home in January. Some economists query whether or not the insurance policies he has indicated he’ll pursue — tariffs on US imports, mass deportations of immigrants and large tax cuts for the rich — would possibly undermine the long-term benefits the US at the moment boasts, and threat a return to resurgent inflation and maintain rates of interest elevated.
Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell — whom Trump attacked in his first time period as president — has acknowledged the uncertainty across the nation’s productiveness outlook. “The lore on productivity readings”, he advised reporters in November, “is whenever you see high readings, you should assume they’re going to revert pretty quickly to the longer-term trend.”
However many anticipate the US to retain pole place and say different international locations stand little probability of catching up. “Trump’s economic policies will tarnish US technology exceptionalism,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “But he will not undermine it.”
Will increase in productiveness — a measure of how effectively assets are used within the economic system — enable staff to earn greater wages, develop corporations’ profitability and increase tax revenues, in the end boosting dwelling requirements.
It’s an indicator the place the US has loved outstanding success. Within the three months to September 2024, based on official statistics, US output per hour labored was up by 8.9 per cent from its pre-pandemic degree on the finish of 2019, having expanded at annual charges between 2 per cent and a couple of.8 per cent over greater than a yr.
The distinction with its northerly neighbour is harsh. Canada’s labour productiveness has contracted for 14 of the final 16 quarters and was 1.2 per cent beneath its pre-pandemic degree on the finish of the second quarter of 2024. Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor on the Financial institution of Canada, warned in March that weak productiveness was an financial “emergency”, including that “over the past four decades, we have actually slipped significantly compared with some other countries”.
Canada isn’t alone. Knowledge from the Convention Board exhibits that, up to now few years, labour productiveness has dropped relative to that of the US in most superior economies. Within the UK, the “productivity malaise” stretches again to the worldwide monetary disaster, says Bart van Ark, managing director on the UK-based Productiveness Institute, blaming it on “chronically slow public and private investment and the lack of diffusion of the latest technologies and innovations across the economy”.
The Eurozone skilled an identical slowdown. Labour productiveness grew by 5.3 per cent within the 5 years to 2007, however that dropped to 2.6 per cent within the 5 years to 2019 and simply 0.8 per cent in the newest 5 years. The US’s spectacular energy in tech is the distinction, Draghi wrote: “If we exclude the tech sector, EU productivity growth over the past 20 years would be broadly at par with the US.”
FT evaluation of the EU Industrial R&D Funding Scoreboard, which tracks international high traders, means that sample could possibly be constant throughout many different superior economies. Most international locations carry out poorly in relation to analysis and growth spending, and there’s additionally enormous underrepresentation in fast-growing sectors.
Globally, the highest R&D spenders are more and more concentrated in software program and laptop providers, a sector that has overtaken pharma, tech {hardware} and car manufacturing to change into the main vacation spot for funding. It’s dominated by US corporations, usually very massive ones.
China is the one different massive economic system making important strides in tech R&D spending. Xi Jinping’s authorities lately introduced plans to make the nation the “primary” centre for AI innovation by 2030; based on OECD information, the quantity of enterprise capital invested in AI in China is now the second highest globally after the US.
Different superior economies present little signal of this dynamism. In keeping with information by Preqin, the US accounts for 83 per cent of the quantity of VC funding in G7 economies over the previous decade. The nation additionally attracted 14.6 per cent of the world’s general greenfield overseas direct funding within the first 10 months of 2024, based on fDi Markets information — a report excessive. Germany, in contrast, registered its lowest share of world FDI in 18 years.
The period of unassailable American productiveness development is comparatively new. Within the years after the second world warfare, the US economic system skilled excessive development however productiveness in most European economies and Japan caught up.
Within the three many years to 1980, in international locations that at the moment are within the Eurozone, labour productiveness quadrupled whereas throughout that decade, Japan dominated shopper electronics and automobile manufacturing, resulting in angst within the US that it might change into the world’s greatest economic system.
In keeping with Andrea Colli, professor of enterprise historical past at Bocconi College in Italy, the advance was largely all the way down to reconstruction efforts partly funded by the US by way of the Marshall Plan, which poured over $13bn into the continent’s battered economies.
However he additionally factors out that “productivity growth was stronger in Europe and Japan than in the US . . . for more than two decades, thanks to technological advancement and management improvement”.
By the Nineteen Nineties, progress had stalled. As the knowledge and communication revolution gathered tempo, US productiveness started to outpace that of different superior economies the place such sectors had been much less represented.
That hole widened after the monetary disaster, and plenty of specialists, together with the Financial institution for Worldwide Settlements, have pointed to lagging funding in different superior economies.
The development additionally displays a special idea of competitiveness, argues Samy Chaar, chief economist on the financial institution Lombard Odier. “Americans are striving for innovation productivity, which is investment-led, while the rest of the world seems to be in another economic logic,” he says. “They are very much more focused on cost competitiveness.”
The US shows extra tolerance of threat, at each an investor and authorities degree. “[US investors] take greater risk across everything in tech than any other country,” says Michael Buhr, a Canadian tech entrepreneur now based mostly in Silicon Valley who leads C100, a non-profit that helps Canadian tech entrepreneurs. Profitable investments create extra enterprise funds, which in flip spawn new entrepreneurs and companies — one thing Buhr describes as a “flywheel effect”.
Lots of Europe’s entrepreneurs usually are not so lucky. Justus Lauten based foodforecast, which employs AI to assist meals companies create extra correct gross sales forecasts, however says he wouldn’t advocate beginning a enterprise in his native Germany. “I think the venture capitalists [in Germany] are very risk-averse.”
Nicolò Mazzocchi, the co-founder of Skillvue, a Milan-based agency whose AI-powered instrument helps corporations analyse the abilities of job candidates, secured early financing from an Italian financial institution. However he says this expertise was “extremely difficult”, including that “investors are very scared to be the first mover — it’s the biggest challenge in the early stage”.
Phillip Sewell, CEO and co-founder of Predyktable, a UK-based agency that has developed a platform to assist corporations predict demand for issues comparable to stock and labour, says he discovered himself battling with the UK tax authorities over tax reliefs on R&D.
“The government talks about supporting start-ups and scale-ups, but I found that it’s very difficult,” Sewell says. Authorities businesses are “still very risk-averse, [with] very much a ‘Doubting Thomas’ type of attitude”.
Within the EU, complicated regulation, an absence of top-ranking tutorial establishments and smaller and extra fragmented markets are amongst different boundaries to innovation highlighted by the Draghi report. These findings are according to a number one European tech survey printed by Atomico in November.
Even when European companies try to develop within the US-dominated tech and social media market, “there’s no room for a British or French company to come in and try to compete”, says Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern College.
“They’re not just too small, but they’re too late.”
The problem for different superior economies isn’t just replicating America’s dynamism. It’s to take action whereas retaining their cherished social safeguards.
For all its financial energy, the US has the most important revenue inequality within the G7, coupled with the bottom life expectancy and the best housing prices, based on the OECD. Market competitors is proscribed and tens of millions of staff endure unstable employment circumstances.
Europe’s social security web must be paid for, warned Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Financial institution, in a speech in November. Boosting competitiveness is important for long-term prosperity, she argued: “Failure to do so could jeopardise our ability to generate the wealth needed to sustain our economic and social model.”
There are numerous initiatives beneath method, starting from Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund and the UK’s enterprise capital schemes and Sensible Grants programmes to the EU’s European Tech Champions Initiative and Horizon Europe — a funding programme for analysis and innovation with a funds of almost €100bn.
Many are geared toward tackling abilities shortages and inspiring extra folks to check science, know-how, engineering and maths. Since 2017, Canada’s World Talent Technique programme has facilitated work permits for folks deemed high-skilled. The EU has proposed a “talent pool”, an internet platform connecting jobseekers from elsewhere with job vacancies within the bloc.
But these efforts are inadequate; the Draghi report estimated that €800bn of funding yearly — round 4.7 per cent of EU GDP — is required to forestall the bloc from falling additional behind the US and China. He additionally advocated integrating capital markets, boosting funding in universities and lowering regulation.
The Financial institution of Canada has additionally urged the nation’s authorities to shut the funding hole with the US and create incentives to permit corporations in high-value industries to develop and thrive. Japan has pledged $13bn of presidency assist for home chip manufacturing and funding in generative AI whereas the UK’s chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has dedicated to a further £100bn of capital spending over the following 5 years to spice up productiveness development.
However Nathan Sheets, chief economist at Citigroup, says that regardless of these efforts and China’s push to change into an AI superpower, the US is the “place where AI is happening, and will continue to be the place where AI happens”.
The prospect of a second Trump administration has made many economists nervous. Mahmood Pradhan, head of world macro at Amundi Funding Institute, says that each tariffs and deportations of migrants are “negative for investment”.
“We’re going to have an increasing share of GDP devoted to paying interest on the federal debt,” says Northwestern’s Gordon. “It’s another drain away from potential funds available for investment.” Heightened strain on costs is also detrimental to funding, analysts counsel.
However for a lot of specialists, America’s place is safe. “The US has a whole ecosystem to promote innovation and its impact on the economy via productivity gains,” says Chaar. “There is a lot of ground to cover for the rest of the world.”
If something, says Zandi, “Europe will struggle with the heightened economic and geopolitical uncertainties created by Trump’s policies and will need to invest more in defence, limiting the resources it has available.”
Economists polled by Consensus Economics anticipate development of 1.9 per cent subsequent yr within the US, the quickest of any G7 economic system. Trying 10 years forward, they nonetheless forecast the quickest development.
It’s like watching a 100-metre remaining the place somebody wins by a really broad margin, says Simon Gaudreault, chief economist on the Canadian Federation of Unbiased Companies. “We’re left wondering: is it because those nine were all much weaker, or is it [because] that competitor ahead of the pack found a secret formula?”
Further information visualisation by Alan Smith
