The AI boom runs on data centers. According to Cathie Wood, the money that builds them is overwhelmingly American.
In ARK Invest’s “In The Know” video, released in early October 2026, Wood cited Bloomberg data showing that nearly 90% of global data center financing is based in the United States.
What ARK actually said
Of all the capital flowing into data center construction worldwide, roughly nine of every ten dollars are being financed in the US, per the Bloomberg figures Wood referenced.
Wood framed the statistic as evidence of America’s lead in the AI investment race.
She tied the concentration directly to the US tax code, pointing to two features in particular.
The first is 100% first-year depreciation for qualifying assets. Normally, when a company buys expensive equipment, it writes off the cost gradually over several years. Full first-year depreciation lets a company deduct the entire cost up front.
The second factor Wood highlighted is an effective corporate tax rate of around 8%. That is the share of profits companies actually end up paying after deductions and incentives, not the headline statutory rate printed in the tax code.
The scale of the buildout
Hundreds of billions of dollars in debt and project financing have been reported for AI data centers.
Data center systems spending has been projected to triple to $1.4 trillion over five years, a forecast dating from January 2026.
ARK’s October 2026 portfolio changes emphasized exposure to AI infrastructure, which lines up with the thesis Wood presented on camera.
What this means
If nearly 90% of the money is landing in one country, the businesses absorbing that capital are concentrated there too.
Concentration cuts both ways. When so much of a global buildout depends on one jurisdiction’s tax code, that code becomes a single point of failure. Incentives like full first-year depreciation are policy choices, and policy choices can change.
The debt load is the other thing to watch. Hundreds of billions in borrowing for AI data centers means lenders are betting that demand for computing power keeps rising fast enough to service those loans.
Investors following Wood’s thesis should track two signals closely: any changes to the tax provisions she credited, and whether reported financing volumes keep pace with the spending forecasts projected to reach $1.4 trillion.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.