By Vikrant Rana (ECTA WIPO-Link Committee and Design Committee member, S.S. Rana & Co., India)The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Luiss Business School have released the third edition of the World Intangible Investment Highlights (WIIH) 2026, revealing that global investment in intangible assets, including R&D, software and data, brands, design, and organizational know-how- exceeded USD 10 trillion in 2025, an all-time high across the 29 economies covered, which together account for 57 percent of world GDP.Intangibles Outpace Physical InvestmentThe Report states that since 2008, intangible investment has grown at a compound annual rate of 3.5 percent in real terms i.e. 3.6 times faster than tangible investment (0.98 percent). It further provides that from 2015 to 2025 alone, intangible assets grew at 4.4 percent annually which was roughly 2.5 times the pace of physical investment.Notably, intangible investment has also proven more resilient to economic headwinds. Despite multi-decade-high interest rates, tighter financing conditions, and trade policy uncertainty, intangible investment across the EU, UK and US grew at 5.5 percent annually between 2020 and 2025, compared to 3.2 percent for tangible investment. The report attributes this to the nature of intangible assets: unlike debt-financed factories and machinery, firms continued investing in software, data, R&D and organizational capital even through the rate-hike cycle.Intangible investment now represents 12.8 percent of GDP across the sample economies, exceeding the tangible share of 11.8 percent. Of all economies, Sweden remains the most intangible-intensive economy (17.4 percent of GDP), followed by the US (15.6 percent) and France (15.2 percent).Special Theme: Brands as a Trillion-Dollar Asset ClassThis year's special theme examines brands as strategic assets. Brand investment across sample economies reached USD 1.4 trillion in 2025, growing at 4.2 percent annually since 2015. The US leads by a wide margin (USD 566 billion), more than four times second-ranked UK (USD 137 billion), followed by Japan, Germany and Brazil.The report underscores that brands have become more valuable than ever in the AI era: as AI-generated content proliferates, trusted brands serve as rare signals of authenticity and provenance. At the same time, the report cautions that the same technologies amplify brand risks, such as- deepfakes and synthetic media can impersonate brands and fabricate endorsements which elevates the importance of robust brand protection strategies.Significantly, brand investment remains a "current cost" in national accounts following the UN Statistical Commission's 2025 SNA revision, meaning it forms part of the roughly 62 percent of intangible investment that goes unmeasured in official statistics, a measurement gap the WIPO–LBS partnership seeks to bridge.AI Reshaping the Intangible EconomyThe report updates its analysis of the AI–intangibles nexus. While most AI spending continues to flow into physical infrastructure, with the US accounting for roughly 62 percent of global private AI-related capital expenditure and 76 percent of global AI infrastructure spending in 2025- the lasting economic impact of AI is expected to come from the intangible assets built on top of it.Software and databases remain the fastest-growing intangible category (7.3 percent annually, 2013–2023), and the report predicts AI will lift investment across all intangible asset types: from organizational capital (as firms rebuild processes around AI) and R&D (as AI compresses discovery cycles) to brands (as guarantees of authenticity) and employer training (as continuous reskilling becomes permanent).Here are 10 key highlights from the WIIH 2026:Intangible investment crossed USD 10 trillion in 2025;Intangibles are growing 3.6 times faster than tangible investment;Intangible investment is more resilient to economic shocks;Intangibles now account for a bigger share of GDP than physical capital;At nearly USD 5 trillion in 2025 (around six times Japan's level), the US accounts for close to half of all intangible investment captured;AI is reviving tangible investment, but narrowly;Software and databases are the fastest-growing intangible asset;Around 62 percent of intangible investment goes unmeasured in official statistics;Brands are a trillion-dollar asset class;Brands matter more than ever in the AI era, but face new risks.The message from the WIIH 2026 is fairly straightforward- the global economy is now being shaped more by what firms know, build and brand than by what they physically own. As AI accelerates this shift, businesses that recognize the value of their intangible assets early, and take steps to protect them, will be the ones best placed to compete in the years ahead.Source: WIPO and Luiss Business School, World Intangible Investment Highlights 2026 (July 2026), WIPO Publication No. 1097EN/26, available at wipo.int. The electronic version of the WIIH 2026 is available here.