82 M C K I N S EY Q UA RT E R LY FDI Shake-Up O IL. COPPER. SEMICON ductors. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has seeded and transformed these and many other global industries. - - - - - - - - - Cross-border investments in the late 19th cen tury forged the global oil industry as money and know-how flowed from the United States and Europe to Baku (present-day Azerbaijan) and Sumatra (modern-day Indonesia), followed by investment around the globe in the 20th century. Similarly, foreign investments shaped mineral-rich economies. For example, Chile’s position as a world-leading copper exporter for most of the past 140 years was catalyzed by multinational firms that developed vast open-pit mines and transferred geological, engineering, and operational expertise. Following World War II, FDI played a critical role in spurring global manufacturing. South Korea’s semiconductor industry first emerged from successive waves of FDI, particularly from US and Japanese multinationals, starting in the 1970s. FDI fueled China’s rise to become a leading manufacturing power as multinational enterprises built factories, transferred knowledge, and nur tured labor and supplier ecosystems. FDI offers a window into the next era of global industry. Today, FDI offers a window into the next era of global industry. Cross-border investments create fresh productive capacity—such as new mines, fac tories, and data centers—in new places. And recent FDI announcements promise to shape advanced manufacturing, AI infrastructure, and the resources that power them. Since 2022, three-quarters of cross-border announcements have gone to these industries—up from about half pre-2020. Our analysis is based on almost 200,000 announced greenfield FDI projects from 2015 through May 2025—using data provided by fDi Markets, from the Financial Times . This data indi cates that pledged investment has increasingly followed geopolitical lines. For example, since 2022 advanced economies announced more investment into one another—particularly into the United States—when compared with the five years before the pandemic. At the same time, advanced economies decreased their announced flows into China by nearly 70 percent. The geometry of global trade had already been shifting toward geopolitically closer partners, a pattern seen for nearly a decade. FDI may accelerate that trend, consistent with new tariffs, security concerns, and more muscular, domestically driven industrial policies. Stakes are high and change is afoot. Megadeals over $1 billion account for half the total investment pledges. New data centers, semiconductor fab rication facilities (fabs), and battery factories with high price tags have seen more megadeals than ever before. If successful, FDI projects announced since 2022 could more than quadruple current bat tery manufacturing capacity outside China, nearly double the global data center capacity that powers AI, and draw the United States into the circle of top leading-edge semiconductor-producing nations. These shifts matter for companies of all kinds, not just tech giants and advanced manufacturers. As the aphorism goes, when others dig for gold, sell shovels. Announcements of major projects signal opportunities for companies all along the value chain, while introducing new considerations for competitors across the world. FDI patterns can help decision-makers map a path that anticipates the shifting geometry of global trade and the future land scape of international business before it happens. FDI HAS SHIFTED TOWARD THE INDUSTRIES OF THE FUTURE Announced greenfield FDI flows increasingly tar get industries that will shape the global economy and the resources that power them. Future- shaping industries, as we call them, include semiconductor fabs; data centers powering AI; electric-vehicle (EV) and battery manufacturing