Artificial Intelligence is reshaping the global economy—but its benefits are flowing unevenly, accelerating the divide between the rich and the rest. Even before widespread job losses fully materialise, AI is already concentrating wealth at the top. This is according to recent global reports.

A McKinsey study estimates that 400–800 million jobs could be disrupted by AI by 2030. At the same time, an Oxfam report shows that billionaire wealth grew three times faster in 2025 than the average pace over the previous five years. This growth was largely fuelled by the AI-driven market boom.

Much of this surge came from the US tech sector. The so-called ‘Magnificent Seven’—including Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon—invested over $400 billion in AI infrastructure. As a result, this pushed their stocks up 27.5% last year. The AI frenzy also created a new class of billionaires. AI startups attracted $100 billion in venture capital, resulting in at least 50 new billionaires globally.

Wealth concentration at the top has become stark. The 10 richest billionaires together held $2.4 trillion in 2025, more than the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population, or about 4 billion people, Oxfam noted. The biggest gains came from Big Tech founders. For example, Alphabet’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin added over $100 billion to their fortunes as Google crossed a $3 trillion valuation.

Oxfam warned that rising economic inequality is increasingly translating into political inequality. Billionaires, the report said, are over 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens. In the US, policies under President Donald Trump coincided with a sharp rise in billionaire wealth. Notably, Trump’s own net worth tripled to $7.3 billion by September 2025.

The widening gap is also squeezing the global middle class. The 2026 World Inequality Report found that middle-class incomes have seen little growth over the past four decades, while the top 1% captured the largest gains. In contrast, the middle 40% in many countries grew at less than 1% per year.

The trend is especially visible in India. There, a large share of the population that once belonged to the middle-income group has slipped into the bottom 50%. This highlights how the AI-led wealth boom is reshaping societies far beyond the tech sector.

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