Every minute, billions of digital actions—from social-media clips to AI computations—are reshaping how we work, communicate, and make decisions. Surging digital activity is reshaping industries and opening new avenues for innovation across the globe.
The world is generating, consuming, and analyzing information at a pace unimaginable just a few years ago (see
The Big Data Revolution). Every minute, billions of digital interactions—from social media videos to artificial intelligence (AI) computations—are reshaping how we work, communicate, and make decisions. This accelerating digital activity is not only transforming industries but also creating fertile ground for companies to innovate in our ever-evolving global economy.
- The digital economy is growing rapidly. According to Statista, there are over 5.6 billion internet users who spend a remarkable amount of time online—averaging over 6 hours and 20 minutes per day. However, there is ample runway for increased internet activity: approximately 2.6 billion individuals—roughly 32% of the global population—are still offline, including nearly one billion in South Asia.
- The volume of digital activity, shown in the table above, is staggering. Every minute there are 251 million emails sent, 139 million Reels watched, and nearly 6 million Google searches conducted—highlighting the scale of online communication, entertainment, and information access. Meanwhile, AI workloads are accelerating, with 11 billion tokens—small pieces of data typically approximating a word—processed per minute by Alphabet alone, reflecting how deeply entrenched generative AI has become in enterprise workflows and content creation. In fact, Alphabet recently reported a fifty-fold increase in monthly token usage over the past year.1
- In our view, the growing trend in digital activity and now surge in AI workloads signal a transformative shift in how information is generated, consumed, and acted upon—creating powerful tailwinds for companies that enable or capitalize on this accelerating cycle of innovation.
1Alphabet, Inc., Google I/O – Google Keynote on 5/20/25.
The views expressed are the views of Fred Alger Management, LLC (“FAM”) and its affiliates as of May 2025. These views are subject to change at any time and may not represent the views of all portfolio management teams. These views should not be interpreted as a guarantee of the future performance of the markets, any security or any funds managed by FAM. These views are not meant to provide investment advice and should not be considered a recommendation to purchase or sell securities.
Risk Disclosures: : Investing in the stock market involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. Growth stocks may be more volatile than other stocks as their prices tend to be higher in relation to their companies’ earnings and may be more sensitive to market, political, and economic developments.
Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Investors whose reference currency differs from that in which the underlying assets are invested may be subject to exchange rate movements that alter the value of their investments.
Companies involved in, or exposed to, AI-related businesses may have limited product lines, markets, financial resources or personnel as they face intense competition and potentially rapid product obsolescence, and many depend significantly on retaining and growing their consumer base.These companies may be substantially exposed to the market and business risks of other industries or sectors, and may be adversely affected by negative developments impacting those companies, industries or sectors, as well as by loss or impairment of intellectual property rights or misappropriation of their technology. Companies that utilize AI could face reputational harm, competitive harm, and legal liability, and/or an adverse effect on business operations as content, analyses, or recommendations that AI applications produce may be deficient, inaccurate, biased, misleading or incomplete, may lead to errors, and may be used in negligent or criminal ways. AI companies, especially smaller companies, tend to be more volatile than companies that do not rely heavily on technology.
Investing in innovation is not without risk and there is no guarantee that investments in research and development will result in a company gaining market share or achieving enhanced revenue. Companies exploring new technologies may face regulatory, political or legal challenges that may adversely impact their competitive positioning and financial prospects. Developing technologies to displace older technologies or create new markets may not in fact do so, and there may be sector-specific risks. There will be winners and losers that emerge, and investors need to conduct a significant amount of due diligence on individual companies to assess these risks and opportunities.
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The following positions represent firm wide assets under management as of March 31, 2025: Adobe Inc., 0.0%, Apple Inc., 4.5%, Alphabet Inc., 1.6%, Microsoft Corporation, 8.7%, Meta Platforms Inc Class A, 5.5%, Snap Inc., 0.0%.
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