Investment in artificial intelligence and other intangible assets is proving more resilient than conventional capital spending as geopolitical and trade uncertainty weighs on eurozone growth, according to analysis by the European Central Bank.
The ECB estimates that heightened uncertainty associated with conflict and trade disruption reduced eurozone growth by approximately 0.4 percentage points between the first quarters of 2025 and 2026.
Business investment has historically responded sharply to uncertainty because spending on factories, machinery, property, and other fixed assets can be expensive to reverse. When companies cannot predict demand, tariffs, energy prices, or financing conditions, delaying a project can preserve cash and strategic flexibility.
Intangible investment has behaved differently. Spending on software, data, research, intellectual property, organisational capability, and artificial intelligence remained comparatively resilient, indicating that companies continued to pursue digital and productivity programmes even as they postponed some physical projects.
The ECB’s survey work suggests that eurozone companies plan to allocate an average of around 9% of their total investment to AI during 2026. Existing users expect to commit a larger share than companies that have yet to adopt the technology.
Part of that resilience reflects the structure of the expenditure. Many AI projects can begin as relatively modest commitments to software, cloud services, data preparation, or consultancy rather than requiring a single large capital decision.
Companies can test tools within one function, measure the result, and expand or terminate deployment without constructing a new physical asset. That flexibility becomes more valuable when demand, regulation, or trade conditions are difficult to forecast.
Digital investment can also appear more attractive during periods of economic pressure. Organisations seeking to protect margins may accelerate automation, forecasting, fraud detection, customer service, and workflow projects that promise to reduce costs or increase output without adding comparable headcount.
Resilient budgets do not guarantee productive outcomes. Many companies are still working out how to distinguish genuine efficiency gains from experimentation, duplicated software costs, or projects that shift expenditure without changing underlying performance.
Concerns over the financial stability risks surrounding debt and AI investment have centred on the possibility that rapid capital deployment could run ahead of sustainable commercial returns. Continued investment increases the need for disciplined governance, clear ownership, and credible measures of operational value.
The distinction between tangible and intangible investment is also becoming less clear. AI software depends on data centres, semiconductors, power generation, grid connections, cooling systems, and telecommunications networks.
Corporate expenditure may be recorded as digital or intangible, but the wider adoption cycle requires substantial physical infrastructure. Companies can therefore encounter a mismatch between the speed at which they want to deploy AI and the availability of energy, computing capacity, reliable data, and specialist skills.
Purchasing a software licence is relatively quick. Redesigning processes, integrating systems, establishing dependable data governance, training employees, and controlling risk usually takes considerably longer.
Uncertainty also influences which projects receive approval. Boards are more likely to support investment with a direct connection to efficiency, regulatory compliance, revenue protection, or customer retention, while speculative programmes face greater resistance when their returns depend on assumptions that cannot be tested against existing operations.
The ECB expects investment to outpace economic growth over its projection horizon as spending on digitalisation, defence, and infrastructure increases. Near-term performance remains vulnerable, however, to conflict-related energy disruption, weaker trade, and the effect of uncertainty on consumer and corporate decisions.
Resilient intangible investment offers some protection by sustaining demand for professional services, software, cloud capacity, and specialist labour. It may also increase productivity in sectors where output has remained weak, provided organisations integrate the technology into day-to-day operations.
The gains will not be distributed evenly. Larger companies generally have greater access to data, finance, computing resources, and specialist expertise, while smaller organisations are more likely to depend on standardised tools supplied by third parties.
That dependency can reduce implementation costs, but it may also limit control over pricing, security, data use, and competitive differentiation. Smaller companies can adopt quickly while remaining exposed to decisions made by a handful of major technology providers.
AI investment also alters the composition of work. Organisations may need fewer people performing repetitive processing while requiring more employees capable of redesigning workflows, validating outputs, managing risk, and interpreting results.
The ECB’s findings indicate that companies consider digital capability important enough to protect when wider confidence is weak. Whether that resilience strengthens eurozone growth will depend on how effectively spending is converted into productive capacity rather than remaining a collection of disconnected pilots, licences, and consultancy programmes.
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