Trillion

• Op 7 mei 2026 kondigde het Ministerie van Wetenschap en ICT van Zuid-Korea de vorming aan van een nationaal AI-supercomputing-netwerk, waarbij 16 bestaande datacenters worden geïntegreerd in één uniform platform met een totale verwerkingscapaciteit van meer dan 40 exaFLOPS. • Het netwerk, gefinancierd met ₩12 biljoen (ongeveer $9 miljard), zal gesubsidieerde rekenkracht bieden aan binnenlandse startups, universiteiten en autofabrikanten, met een speciale nadruk op het trainen van Koreaanse LLM's en modellen voor autonoom rijden. • Seoul positioneert het netwerk als een tegengewicht voor de door de staat gesteunde AI-clusters van China en de Amerikaanse hyperscalers, terwijl het tegelijkertijd de exportcontroles op high-end GPU's die in het netwerk zijn geïntegreerd, aanscherpt.

• India's Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairman Ravi Agrawal stated on Monday that the country is confident of achieving its direct tax collection target of ₹25.2 trillion ($284.39 billion) for the current financial year. • The ambitious target reflects strong economic growth and improved tax compliance, driven by digital infrastructure expansion and enhanced taxpayer registrations. • Meeting this revenue goal is critical for government fiscal planning and public expenditure allocation across infrastructure, social programs, and defense.

• Asia-Pacific's cross-border payments market, valued at $13.5 trillion in 2025, is forecast to surge to $24 trillion by 2033, fueled by QR payments and digital adoption.• Thailand ranks second in regional economic optimism, supporting robust growth in transaction volumes across Southeast Asia.• Expansion driven by e-commerce boom and fintech innovations enhances trade efficiency in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam.• Regulators eye next steps in harmonizing standards to sustain projected CAGR amid rising geopolitical tensions.

• The United States national debt has reached $38,967,833,861,543 as of May 1, 2026, driven by continued spending by the White House and Congress. • The debt is on track to double over the next three decades amid fiscal pressures and ongoing government expenditures. • This trajectory reflects a critical macroeconomic challenge as American taxpayers face increasing obligations tied to the nation's long-term fiscal sustainability.

• Meta released Llama 4 on April 20, 2026, a 2 trillion parameter multimodal AI model trained on 15 petabytes of US-centric data. • The model outperforms GPT-4o on benchmarks like MMLU (92% score) and supports vision-language tasks for enterprise apps. • Open-sourcing aims to spur US AI innovation, with downloads exceeding 500,000 in first hours via Hugging Face.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced at GTC 2026 that demand for the company's products will reach $1 trillion through 2027, with fulfillment only possible by 2028. • The revelation underscores explosive growth in AI hardware needs, driven by data center expansions and model training. • Nvidia also released NemoClaw, an open-source stack enhancing privacy and security for the popular OpenClaw AI agent.

• SpaceX confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Wednesday, April 2, 2026, signaling major movement toward going public. • The aerospace company is targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation in the IPO, reflecting investor confidence in the commercial space sector. • The filing comes as Elon Musk's companies face increased market scrutiny, with analyst focus expected to intensify on SpaceX developments.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced expectations of at least $1 trillion in demand for its Blackwell and Rubin AI systems through 2027, doubling from $500 billion projected through 2026. • This projection signals over 100% annual sales growth for Nvidia amid booming data center demand. • The forecast underscores AI's role in driving U.S. tech sector expansion and GDP growth, with analysts citing non-inflationary productivity gains.

• Forrester Research forecasts global technology spending will grow 7.8% in 2026 to $5.6 trillion, up from $5.2 trillion in 2025, driven primarily by continued AI investment across defense, financial services, healthcare, industry, and retail sectors. • Computer equipment will see the highest growth at 16.8% due to rising AI server demand, with AI-specialized computers expected to capture more than 80% of computer equipment spending by 2030, up from 43% in 2024. • Financial services and healthcare sectors will see robust technology spending in 2026, driven by investments in cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, AI, data storage, and AI literacy training despite broader economic volatility.

• A Congressional Budget Office report released March 19, 2026, estimates laws from the 119th Congress's first session (Jan 2025-Jan 2026) will boost the 2025-2034 deficit by $3.5 trillion. • The net effect stems from $1.1 trillion reduced outlays and $4.6 trillion decreased revenues, excluding interest costs on added borrowing. • Findings highlight fiscal impacts of authorizing and appropriations legislation, informing ongoing budget debates.

• NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced at GTC in San Jose a forecast of $1 trillion in sales from Blackwell and Rubin chips by late 2027, doubling the prior $500 billion estimate through 2026. • The company unveiled a new inference system generating 700 million tokens per second, 350 times faster than the Hopper generation, to counter custom chips from competitors like Google. • NVIDIA's DRIVE platform for robotaxis, valued at $1.2 trillion by Morgan Stanley, is adopted by Uber and BYD, with Uber's fleet launching in 2028; data center revenue hit $192 billion last year, up 66%.

• CMS actuaries forecast U.S. health spending at $5.3 trillion in 2024, outpacing economic growth to hit 20% of GDP by 2033. • Projections highlight unsustainable trajectory for national health expenditures. • Policymakers face pressure to address cost drivers in insurance, drugs, and services.

• The US national debt exceeded $39 trillion on Wednesday, a record milestone reached just weeks into the US-Israeli war in Iran, driven by competing priorities including tax cuts, defense spending, and immigration enforcement. • White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett estimated the Iran war has cost more than $12 billion so far, with the federal debt having grown from $37 trillion two months ago to $38 trillion five months ago, now reaching $39 trillion. • The Government Accountability Office warns rising debt increases borrowing costs for mortgages and cars, reduces business investment and wages, and makes goods and services more expensive for Americans.

• Nvidia announced at GTC 2026 that it has locked in $1 trillion in orders for its Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips through 2027, far exceeding annual revenue and signaling massive AI infrastructure investment across the industry. • Major hyperscalers including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have significantly ramped up investments in AI data centers and infrastructure, competing to build massive language models and prepare for exponential growth in AI workloads. • Blackwell chips have already begun shipping while Vera Rubin is positioned to deliver major boosts to AI training and inference performance, addressing the current AI infrastructure race among tech giants.

• Nvidia has announced plans to achieve $1 trillion in revenue over the next seven quarters, requiring average quarterly revenue of approximately $143 billion, nearly triple current levels. • The company must add around $65 billion in quarterly revenue from current levels, equivalent to Amazon Web Services' or AMD's annual sales each quarter. • Success depends on sustained AI infrastructure demand, increased production capacity, and supply chain optimization, with projections suggesting Nvidia could need to reach $200 billion per quarter by end of 2027.

• Nvidia is projecting a trillion-dollar chip market while the AI industry shifts focus from training giant models to inference, robotics, and real-world deployment at GTC 2026 in San Jose. • CEO Jensen Huang spotlighted new systems and platforms aimed at industrial use cases and physical AI applications, signaling that commercial viability increasingly depends on inference economics and enterprise adoption. • The market shift reflects where spending is heading: training remains critical, but applied AI and infrastructure orchestration are becoming more investable than generic model-building pitches.

• The Trump administration is using Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to investigate foreign factory capacity and forced labor, aiming to offset $1.6 trillion in tariff revenue lost due to a Supreme Court ruling on February 20. • Public hearings are scheduled for May 5 on factory capacity and April 28 on forced labor, with the goal to complete probes before the current 10% import tariffs expire in 150 days. • Trump imposed a temporary 10% tariff on all imports post-ruling, plans to raise it to 15%, but faces challenges from two dozen states; remaining tariffs on China, Canada, steel, lumber, and cars expected to yield $668 billion over a decade.