Necessary, Not Sufficient: What $42.8 Billion in AI Capital Doesn’t Buy Emerging Markets
We traced USD 42.8 billion in AI capital across five emerging-market regions. 94% of it funds compute infrastructure. That is worth celebrating, and compute is necessary. But it does not, by itself, produce a local AI company, a usable dataset, a skilled workforce or an institution capable of buying and governing an AI system. Those things have to be financed separately, and right now, they largely are not.