An oil shock was supposed to take a real bite out of world growth this year. Without the ways countries found around it, the International Monetary Fund says, the oil disruption alone would have significantly reduced growth in 2026. Instead, in the World Economic Outlook it released on Tuesday, the fund expects the global economy to grow 3.1%, a touch better than the 3.0% it forecast in July.
Some of that is plain good housekeeping: energy was rerouted, stockpiles were drawn down and buyers switched to other fuels. The rest is artificial intelligence. Companies have kept pouring money into AI infrastructure in the expectation of higher returns, the IMF says, and that boom lifted global activity and trade. The countries that build the hardware did best, with growth upgrades for South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF's managing director, summed it up at the fund's meetings in Thailand: "That shift into higher gear is what is keeping the world economy growing at around 3%, despite the fact we are being dragged down by the energy supply shock."
What the boom looks like at Tencent
Tencent, the Chinese technology giant, shows what that spending looks like from inside one company. In the first half of 2026 it spent 96.3 billion yuan on long-term investment, including computing equipment, software and data centres, more than double the 45.9 billion yuan of a year earlier.
To help pay for it, Tencent went back to the bond market this week, selling dollar and yuan IOUs that could raise at least $4.5 billion, according to term sheets seen by Reuters. Lenders were keen: orders for the dollar notes alone topped $2 billion. The last time it borrowed this way was in June, for about $4.66 billion.
On paper, the money is for general corporate purposes. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with a call Tencent held with bond investors, reports that it will mostly fund AI spending, with the bulk of that going on chips.
The risk in the IMF's own report
The IMF is not only cheering. Technology investment, it says, is "concentrating risks", leaving the world's growth heavily reliant on a small number of firms, sectors and economies. Just 32 countries now account for 95% of global growth, against 54 in April. And a reassessment of what people expect from AI is on its list of things that could weaken growth from here.
South Africa is not among the hardware suppliers getting upgrades. The IMF has it growing 1.0% this year and 1.3% in 2027, under half the pace it expects for the world.
