Global Wealth & Power Map 2025

1. Executive Assessment

1.1 The system remained centered on the United States — but not in a one-dimensional way

Observed fact · high confidence. U.S. markets accounted for 43.7% of global equity market capitalization and 38.1% of fixed-income securities outstanding in 2025. Global equity capitalization reached US$157.8 trillion, up 18.9% on the year, while global fixed income reached US$160.7 trillion, up 10.6%. Rising prices and issuance increased the nominal weight of financial capital, but this should not be interpreted entirely as new savings: a material share reflects valuation. Source: SIFMA, 2026 Capital Markets Fact Book.

Inference · high confidence. U.S. financial power comes less from “owning everything” than from operating the world's main mechanism for transforming savings into liquid assets: the dollar, Treasuries, equities, credit, venture capital and intellectual property form a network that is difficult to replace as a whole.

1.2 Reserve diversification is real, but it is not a dollar collapse

Observed fact · high confidence. Official foreign-exchange reserves totaled US$13.14 trillion in Q4 2025. After COFER's methodological revision, the dollar stood at 56.42% in Q4 2025 and returned to 57.13% in Q1 2026. In 2025, exchange-rate movements explained a material part of changes in currency shares. Source: IMF/COFER.

Inference · high confidence. The shift is better described as marginal diversification than abrupt de-dollarization. The dollar has lost share over the long run, but no single substitute has comparable scale, liquidity and depth.

1.3 Gold again became a strategic sovereign balance-sheet asset

Observed fact · high confidence. Central banks bought 863 net tonnes of gold in 2025, according to the World Gold Council — below recent peaks but far above the pre-2022 historical pattern. The WGC's 2026 survey showed 89% of central banks expecting global gold reserves to rise over the following 12 months.

Inference · medium-high confidence. Gold does not replace the dollar as a medium of settlement for global trade; its function is different: reducing counterparty and sanctions risk in the marginal reserve asset. This favors a more hybrid reserve architecture: convertible currencies + gold + regional assets.

1.4 The largest structural shift is at the intersection of resources, processing and manufacturing

Observed fact · high confidence. The IEA estimates that the average share of the largest supplier in refining of tracked critical minerals reached 70% in 2025, up from 68% in 2020. China and Indonesia accounted for more than three quarters of growth in refined supply between 2023 and 2025. Since 2005, China accounted for more than 90% of the increase in global copper-smelting capacity, raising its share from roughly 15% to 50% in 2025.

Inference · high confidence. Owning the deposit is not the same as controlling the income. Economic power shifts toward actors controlling separation, smelting, refining, chemicals, components, equipment and industrial customers.

1.5 AI turned electricity, chips and data centers into geoeconomic assets

Observed fact · high confidence. Data centers captured more than one fifth of the value of global greenfield projects in 2025, according to UNCTAD. The IEA estimates that data-center electricity demand grew 17% in 2025 and that capex by five large technology companies exceeded US$400 billion. Worldwide semiconductor sales reached a record US$791.7 billion, up 25.6%.

1.6 China consolidated a power model based on industrial scale and midstream control

Observed fact · high confidence. China produced more than 80% of batteries in 2025; it accounted for approximately 85% of solar supply-chain capacity and 80% of the lithium-ion battery chain, with even larger shares in photovoltaic wafers and anode materials. In intellectual property, China had 5.7 million patents in force in 2024, versus 3.5 million in the United States, although patent counts are not equivalent to economic value.

Inference · high confidence. China's advantage is more robust in scale, supply-chain integration and manufacturing than in any single measure of financial wealth.

1.7 Gulf states converted hydrocarbon income into global capital

Observed fact · medium-high confidence. State-investor assets continued to grow and market estimates placed SWFs and public funds at record levels in 2025. Data compiled by Global SWF indicated roughly US$15.2 trillion in reported sovereign/public-investor assets, with the Middle East playing a major role in technology and AI.

1.8 The world became more indebted and therefore more dependent on financial pricing

Observed fact · high confidence. Global public debt rose to just under 94% of GDP in 2025, according to the IMF, while total public + private debt remained above 235% of GDP in the latest consolidated reading. Cross-border bank credit again exceeded pre-global-financial-crisis peaks: US$34.7 trillion in Q1 2025, according to the BIS.

Inference · high confidence. The larger the debt stock, the greater the power of those controlling funding currencies, bond markets, collateral and liquidity channels. This reinforces the systemic weight of the United States even as physical production becomes more Asian.

1.9 Intangible assets became a reservoir of wealth comparable with major physical assets

Observed fact · medium-high confidence. WIPO estimates that global intangible investment exceeded US$10 trillion in 2025, with the United States accounting for nearly half. Estimates of corporate intangible-asset value approached US$100 trillion in 2025, but these are valuations and must not be added directly to market capitalization.

Inference · high confidence. Software, data, brands, design, R&D and intellectual property widen the gap between “where the factory is” and “who captures the margin.”

1.10 The 2025 regime

Regime: elevated financialization + strategic reindustrialization + concentration of bottlenecks + securitization of supply chains.

The world did not converge toward two perfectly separated economic blocs. What emerged was a more expensive and redundant network in which governments try to reduce dependence on chips, minerals, energy and digital infrastructure without abandoning the efficiencies of global trade.

2. Methodology, coverage and limits

This report uses four concepts that must not be conflated:

1. Stock: value existing at a point in time — equities, bonds, reserves, gold, industrial capacity or mineral reserves.
2. Flow: movement over a period — FDI, issuance, gold purchases, trade, investment or credit.
3. Valuation: a change in price or exchange rate without physical or ownership transfer.
4. Change of control: acquisition, nationalization, sanctions, corporate reorganization or relocation of capacity that changes who decides over an asset.

There is no single consolidated “global balance sheet.” Adding US$157.8tn in equities, US$160.7tn in bonds, real estate, gold, natural resources and intangibles would create double or triple counting. Equity already capitalizes factories, patents and future cash flows; a bond is simultaneously an asset to the creditor and a liability to the debtor; the value of a deposit may already be embedded in the value of the company controlling it.

For that reason, the numbers in this report are layered maps of power, not additive slices of one pie.

Five-, ten- and twenty-year horizons are used only when methodology remained sufficiently comparable. Classification changes — such as the COFER revision — are treated as methodological breaks, not as economic flows.

3. Global financial-asset balance

The main conclusion is not that “finance is worth more than the real economy,” but that financial ownership is the legal mechanism through which income from the real economy is appropriated. The geography of capital markets matters because it determines where companies finance themselves, where investors park savings and which jurisdictions receive fees, taxes, talent and information.

In 2024, global equities totaled US$126.7 trillion and fixed income US$145.1 trillion. Expansion into 2025 was extraordinary, especially in equities. Part of that represents expected profits and repricing, not physical capital formation.

Twenty-year horizon. The relative weight of the United States in financial markets remained disproportionate to its share of world GDP. China, meanwhile, developed very large domestic markets, but capital controls, lower convertibility and institutional differences limit their role as an equivalent global reservoir.

4. Debt and credit

The IMF estimates global public debt at just under 94% of GDP in 2025 and projects 100% by 2029 in its April 2026 baseline. Total global debt remains much larger when the private sector is included.

The BIS recorded US$34.7 trillion in cross-border bank credit in Q1 2025, above the pre-2008 peak. In Q3 2025, cross-border bank claims rose by US$832 billion adjusted for exchange rates and breaks; in Q4 2025, they rose by another US$994 billion.

Distribution diverged, however: in Q3 2025, credit to emerging Asia fell 6% y/y, while emerging Europe, Africa/Middle East and Latin America grew.

Implication: financial power lies not only in the size of the debt stock, but in who supplies the marginal funding currency and who controls collateral. Sanctions, dollar liquidity and access to clearing now have explicit geopolitical value.

5. Foreign-exchange reserves and reserve currencies

IMF COFER recorded US$13.14 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves in Q4 2025. The dollar share has declined over the long run: it was above 70% in the late 1990s and stood in the 56–58% range in 2025/26. This is a two-decade transformation, but a slow one.

In 2025, movements in EUR, JPY and other currencies against the dollar distorted quarter-to-quarter comparisons. The dollar's decline to 56.32% in Q2 2025, for example, was explained to a significant extent by appreciation of other reserve currencies.

Conclusion:

• dollar: remains the core of liquidity and collateral;
• euro: second pole, but without a unified fiscal market equivalent to Treasuries;
• renminbi: relevant in bilateral trade and China-linked financing, but capital controls constrain its universal reserve function;
• gold: growing as a sovereign, non-liability hedge;
• smaller currencies: gaining marginal share through diversification.

6. Official gold

Central banks bought 863 net tonnes in 2025. The move should be interpreted in three layers:

1. quantity: net physical purchases;
2. price: appreciation raises gold's reserve share without new purchases;
3. strategy: gold is not another state's liability.

Elevated sovereign demand since 2022 suggests a regime change. It is not evidence that central banks are abandoning foreign-exchange reserves, but that they are increasing the value of assets without direct counterparty risk.

Winners: gold producers, countries with large official stocks, and trading/custody systems. Relative losers: issuers of traditional reserve assets at the margin, if diversification persists.

7. Sovereign wealth funds and state capital

Sovereign wealth funds transform windfall income, reserves and public savings into global ownership. The most important move in 2025 was the intensification of exposure to technology, digital infrastructure, private markets and AI.

The Middle East gained importance for three reasons: hydrocarbon surpluses, fund scale and the ability to execute large transactions without depending on the quarterly political cycle of listed companies.

Norway remains a distinct model: it converts oil into a broadly diversified global financial portfolio. Singapore combines reserves, state holdings and a hub strategy. China uses multiple state vehicles and policy banks, making simple AUM comparisons incomplete.

Twenty-year reading: the rise of SWFs means a larger share of global ownership is intermediated by states, even in market economies.

8. Private capital and direct investment

UNCTAD estimates global FDI at US$1.6 trillion in 2025, +6% in the final reading of the World Investment Report 2026. More than 80% went to the 20 largest recipient countries.

The most important structural information is in composition: strategic sectors rose from 16% of greenfield-project value in 2020 to 44% in 2025. Data centers alone accounted for more than one fifth of global greenfield value.

This indicates dual concentration:

• geographic: a small number of destinations capture most capital;
• sectoral: AI, semiconductors, critical minerals and the energy transition absorb a growing share of large projects.

Power shift: capital is migrating toward assets that combine physical, technological and regulatory barriers.

9. Real estate, land and infrastructure

There is no annual global series for real estate, land and infrastructure with sufficient quality to aggregate here without false precision. Residential property is the main household asset in many countries, but price methodology, cadastral coverage and leverage differ substantially.

The most defensible structural reading is qualitative:

• real estate in financial centers continues to function as an international private store of value;
• energy and digital infrastructure gained a strategic premium;
• grid-connected, fiber-connected land began capturing income associated with data centers;
• logistics corridors and ports acquired additional value under geopolitical fragmentation.

These assets are not added to the financial balance to avoid double counting.

10. Energy: reserves are not power without production, transport and conversion

The United States consolidated the transformation started by shale: in 2025 it remained the world's largest crude-oil producer, at about 13.6 million b/d in EIA estimates cited in 2026. The Middle East remains central in low-cost reserves and export capacity. Russia retains a large hydrocarbon base but faces restrictions on access to Western capital, technology and markets.

In electricity, low-emission sources — renewables + nuclear — reached 43% of global generation in 2025, the highest share in fifty years, according to the IEA. At the same time, natural gas and nuclear also grew, showing that incremental demand is not being met by a single technology.

The rise of data centers makes firm generation capacity, grids, transformers and interconnection strategic assets. In the United States, the IEA estimates data centers could account for half of electricity-demand growth through 2030.

11. Strategic minerals

The biggest mistake is to map only geological reserves.

The IEA shows that average concentration in the largest refiner of tracked minerals rose to 70% in 2025. China and Indonesia captured more than 75% of recent growth in refined supply.

Copper: China moved from ~15% of global smelting capacity in 2005 to ~50% in 2025. Nickel: Indonesia became the main hub of incremental refining. Rare earths: projects in the U.S. and Malaysia modestly reduced concentration, but China still held about 85% of refining in 2025. Batteries: China produced more than 80% of batteries in 2025 and hosted more than 85% of global EV-battery recycling capacity.

Conclusion: marginal income shifted from simple ownership of the deposit toward the midstream.

12. Agriculture, water and productive land

Agriculture is strategic because it converts land, water, fertilizers, energy and logistics into food security. A global monetary valuation of “agricultural wealth,” however, would depend heavily on non-comparable land prices and water rights.

Power is distributed:

• Americas: soybeans, corn, meat and large availability of arable land;
• Black Sea region: grains and fertilizers, with high geopolitical sensitivity;
• China: enormous demand, domestic production and stockpiling policy;
• India: large agricultural production and growing demographic weight;
• Gulf/North Africa: higher structural dependence on imports and water.

The less visible link is fertilizer. Sulfur/sulfuric acid, natural gas, phosphate and potash connect energy, mining and food. The IEA highlighted in 2026 that sulfur constraints affect both fertilizers and mineral processing.

13. Industrial capacity and logistics

The ability to capture future income depends on producing at scale and delivering.

China remains the world's largest manufacturing hub and dominates several intermediate segments. The United States retains leadership in capital, software, design and high-margin technology segments. Europe retains sophisticated industrial assets but faces more expensive energy, regulatory fragmentation and smaller digital scale. India and Southeast Asia are gaining share in manufacturing and FDI, but from different starting points.

More than 80% of world merchandise trade by volume moves by sea. UNCTAD estimated maritime trade growth of only 0.5% in 2025, after 2.2% in 2024, amid longer routes, geopolitical risk and adaptation costs.

Inference: logistics is shifting from a mere cost item into a national-security asset.

14. Semiconductors, batteries, compute, data centers and AI

Semiconductors

Worldwide sales: US$791.7 billion in 2025, +25.6%. Economic value is fragmented across design, EDA, equipment, foundries, memory, packaging and materials. No country controls the full chain alone.

• United States: design, software, equipment and capital;
• Taiwan: advanced foundry;
• Korea: memory and manufacturing;
• Japan/Europe: equipment, materials and niches;
• China: large market, mature capacity and accelerated investment in autonomy.

Batteries

China manufactured well above 80% of global batteries in 2025. In 2024 it had 85% of global manufacturing capacity; international projects may reduce that share, but the IEA does not see radical diversification before 2030.

Data centers and AI

Data-center electricity demand grew 17% in 2025. Capex by five large technology companies exceeded US$400 billion. Data centers received more than 20% of global greenfield-project value.

This creates a new map:

The data-center location captures construction, energy and taxes; the platform owner captures digital income; chip and equipment manufacturers capture technology rents; energy/mineral producers capture physical income. The same chain distributes wealth across different jurisdictions.

15. Technology and intangible assets

WIPO estimates global intangible investment above US$10 trillion in 2025, growing faster than tangible investment; the United States accounted for nearly half.

In 2024, China had 5.7 million patents in force, the United States 3.5 million and Japan 2.1 million. Patent counts, however, do not measure quality, profit or internationalization capacity.

The combined reading is more useful:

• United States: greater concentration of value in software, platforms, brands, corporate R&D and venture capital;
• China: enormous scale in patents, engineering, manufacturing and industrial application;
• Europe/Japan/Korea: strong industrial, scientific and intellectual-property niches.

Twenty-year change: value migrated from exclusively physical assets toward combinations of code, data, intellectual property, user networks and compute capacity.

16. Dependency map

Power appears where there is a bottleneck that is difficult to substitute. In 2025, those bottlenecks included dollar capital markets, advanced chip manufacturing, semiconductor equipment, mineral refining, batteries, power grids and compute capacity.

17. Wealth Transfer Matrix 2025

The matrix does not imply a simple net flow. Gulf investment in the United States, for example, transfers financial capital to asset sellers but gives the sovereign fund a claim on future U.S. income.

18. Who gained and lost relative share

United States — financial and technological gain; selective physical vulnerability

Gained from equity appreciation, market depth, AI, intangibles and domestic energy. Still dependent on external supply chains for minerals, components and intermediate manufacturing.

China — industrial and bottleneck gains; less international monetary power

Increased/defended share in refining, batteries, solar and manufacturing. Its currency and markets did not replace the dollar as global financial infrastructure.

Gulf — strategic balance-sheet gain

Converted hydrocarbons into global assets and gained importance as a financier of technology and infrastructure.

India and Southeast Asia — option-value gain

Receive supply-chain diversification and FDI, but still depend on inputs, machinery and capital from larger hubs.

Europe — large wealth stock, relative pressure on growth and energy

Retains industry, savings and robust institutions, but faces smaller digital scale, higher energy costs and investment challenges.

Latin America and Africa — large resource stocks, uneven value capture

The opportunity is to move from raw-material/commodity exporter to processing, energy, logistics and manufacturing. Without that shift, income remains concentrated in royalties and price cycles.

19. Change in the capture of future income

The central question is not “who has more wealth today?” but who owns rights to future cash flows and controls non-substitutable inputs.

In 2025, four models coexisted:

1. U.S. financial-technology model: capital + software + IP + platforms + growing energy capacity.
2. Chinese industrial-midstream model: scale + manufacturing + processing + infrastructure + domestic market.
3. Gulf/Norway/Singapore sovereign-balance-sheet model: convert national income/assets into a global portfolio.
4. Unintegrated-resource model: countries rich in minerals/energy that capture only the first part of the chain.

The fourth model is the most vulnerable. The largest economic premium in coming years is likely to accrue to countries able to connect resources with processing, cheap energy, infrastructure, human capital and market access.

20. Scenarios 2026–2030 and warning indicators

Base case — productive multipolarity with an American financial center

Inference · medium-high confidence. Supply chains become more redundant but do not fully separate. The U.S. maintains financial and digital primacy; China preserves a large part of the industrial midstream; India, Southeast Asia, the Gulf and Latin America capture specific projects.

Indicators: dollar share in COFER; strategic FDI; China's refining share; battery capacity outside China; advanced foundry share by country; data-center capex; sovereign spreads.

Scenario 2 — accelerated fragmentation

Sanctions, export controls and conflict force duplication of supply chains. Costs rise; strategic inventories increase; gold and domestic assets gain weight.

Indicators: controls on chips/minerals; growth in intra-bloc trade; capital restrictions; freight rates; government inventories; divergence in technology standards.

Scenario 3 — AI infrastructure shock

Demand for compute outpaces grid/power expansion. The bottleneck becomes connectable MW, transformers, gas, nuclear, copper and cooling. Valuation shifts partly from software toward infrastructure.

Indicators: connection queues; PPA prices; utility capex; transformer lead times; copper; turbine capacity; data-center electricity consumption.

Scenario 4 — faster monetary diversification

The dollar loses share more quickly because of sanctions, deficits or sovereign diversification, but without a single successor. Gold and secondary currencies gain.

Indicators: FX-adjusted COFER; TIC; official gold purchases; international issuance by currency; RMB/euro use in trade; Treasury spreads.

Scenario 5 — selective resource supercycle

Underinvestment in copper, grids and specific minerals meets electrification/AI expansion. Income shifts toward producers with permitted capacity and infrastructure, not necessarily toward those holding the largest geological reserves.

Indicators: mining capex, ore grades, lead times, inventories, treatment charges, new projects and refining concentration.

Strategic conclusion

The 2025 snapshot does not show a simple replacement of the United States by China or an “end of the dollar.” It shows a specialization of global power.

The United States concentrates the primary financial reservoir, much of global intellectual property and digital platforms, and has strengthened its energy position. China concentrates an exceptional share of mineral processing, batteries, solar and manufacturing, converting physical scale into supply-chain power. Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Europe control specific technological bottlenecks that cannot be replicated quickly. Gulf states convert hydrocarbon income into global ownership. Latin America, Africa and Australia hold critical resources, but value capture depends on moving into processing and infrastructure.

The most important wealth transfers of 2025 ran in four directions:

The variable that best anticipates future economic power is therefore not the gross stock of resources or market capitalization alone. It is the ability to control simultaneously financing, productive bottlenecks, technology, energy and channels of income capture.

Main sources and quality notes

• SIFMA — 2026 Capital Markets Fact Book. Global equity capitalization and fixed income; high annual comparability. https://www.sifma.org/research/reports/fact-book
• IMF — COFER. Foreign-exchange reserves and currency composition; note the retroactive methodological revision in 2025. https://data.imf.org/
• IMF — Fiscal Monitor, April 2026. Global public debt and projections. https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fm/issues/2026/04/15/fiscal-monitor-april-2026
• BIS — International Banking Statistics. Cross-border claims and bank credit; series adjusted for FX/breaks where indicated. https://www.bis.org/statistics/about_banking_stats.htm
• World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends 2025. Net central-bank purchases; estimates complemented by official data. https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/gold-demand-trends/gold-demand-trends-full-year-2025/central-banks
• UNCTAD — World Investment Report 2026. FDI and greenfield projects; final 2025 reading supersedes preliminary estimates. https://unctad.org/publication/world-investment-report-2026
• IEA — Global Energy Review 2026. 2025 energy and electricity; aggregate data and published methodology. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026
• IEA — Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026. Mining, refining and supply-chain concentration; CC BY 4.0. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook-2026
• IEA — Global EV Outlook 2026 / Energy Technology Perspectives 2026. Batteries, EVs and clean-technology supply chains. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2026
• USGS — Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. Production, reserves and mineral resources; annual commodity data. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/mineral-commodity-summaries-2026
• Semiconductor Industry Association. Worldwide semiconductor sales in 2025. https://www.semiconductors.org/global-annual-semiconductor-sales-increase-25-6-to-791-7-billion-in-2025/
• WIPO — Global Innovation Index / World Intellectual Property Indicators / Intangible Investment Highlights. Patents and intangibles; intangible values are estimates and should not be added to market cap. https://www.wipo.int/
• UNCTAD — Review of Maritime Transport 2025. Maritime trade, fleet, freight and infrastructure. https://unctad.org/publication/review-maritime-transport-2025
• UBS — Global Wealth Report 2026. Personal wealth; useful for wealth distribution but methodologically distinct from market cap and national accounts. https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealthmanagement/insights/global-wealth-report.html

Evidence policy: 2025 figures published/revised in 2026 were used to close the base year. News from 2026 was not treated as fact about 2025 except where it described statistical revisions to the period. Private estimates are identified and do not receive the same weight as official series.