Which Companies Invested the Most Abroad?
Key Takeaways
- Five of the world’s 10 largest foreign investors in 2025 were tech companies.
- TSMC led the ranking with $100 billion in announced investment tied to its Arizona expansion.
- The top 10 companies accounted for more than a quarter of the $1.3 trillion in new foreign investments announced globally.
In 2025, multinational companies announced more than $1.3 trillion in new foreign investments, up 2.2% from the previous year. The largest commitments spanned semiconductor fabs, data centers, energy projects, and other major infrastructure.
This visualization ranks the 10 largest foreign investors of 2025 using announced investments from The fDi Report 2026. Only greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) announcements are included, meaning mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and intercompany loans are excluded.
Why TSMC Invested $100B in Arizona
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor fabricator, topped the ranking after announcing an additional $100 billion investment in its Arizona operations in 2025.
TSMC is also the world’s largest non-U.S. company by market capitalization. Amid record profits and rising demand for its chips, the company planned to use the investment to accelerate production at its facilities in the Phoenix area. The expansion is projected to create more than 18,000 jobs.
The table below ranks the world’s 10 largest foreign investors in 2025 by announced capital expenditure.
| Rank | Company | Capital Expenditure (billions $) | Sector |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇹🇼 TSMC | 100.0 | Tech |
| 2 | 🇨🇳 ByteDance | 45.1 | Tech |
| 3 | 🇦🇪 MGX Fund Management | 43.4 | Finance |
| 4 | 🇨🇦 Brookfield Asset Management | 28.2 | Finance |
| 5 | 🇺🇸 Alphabet | 25.1 | Tech |
| 6 | 🇦🇪 DAMAC Holding | 24.6 | Real Estate |
| 7 | 🇪🇸 Iberdrola | 24.3 | Utilities |
| 8 | 🇺🇸 Microsoft | 17.7 | Tech |
| 9 | 🇦🇺 Woodside Energy | 17.5 | Energy |
| 10 | 🇺🇸 Micron Technology | 16.6 | Tech |
TSMC first pledged roughly $12 billion in 2020 to open an Arizona fabrication plant. These facilities, known as “fabs,” were designed to reduce semiconductor supply-chain risk by shifting some production away from Taiwan.
The company steadily expanded its investment over the following years as U.S.-China tensions increased, particularly around advanced chip technology. TSMC plans to produce some of its most advanced chips in Arizona as part of a 2024 deal with the U.S. government.
Despite labor challenges and higher costs, TSMC has continued to deepen its investment in Arizona. Following additional pledges in 2026, the firm’s overall greenfield investment in the state stands at $265 billion, making it the largest foreign investment in U.S. history.
Free-Flowing Tech Capital
TSMC stood well ahead of the field, but tech companies dominated the ranking overall, taking five of the top 10 spots.
ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, ranked second with $45.1 billion in announced investment. Nearly $40 billion of that total came from plans to build a major data center in Brazil, a project expected to create roughly 5,000 jobs.
Big Tech firms including Alphabet ($25.1 billion) and Microsoft ($17.7 billion) also announced sizable foreign investments. Alphabet subsidiary Google, for example, pledged more than $5 billion for a large data center campus in Belgium to help meet growing demand for Google Cloud.
The Non-Tech Firms Want In Too
Digital infrastructure also shaped the investment priorities of companies outside the tech sector, particularly in Europe.
Emirati state-owned investment firm MGX Fund Management, for example, focuses heavily on global AI technologies. The company announced about $43.4 billion in investment, including a major French data center project aimed at creating one of Europe’s largest campuses of its kind.
Meanwhile, Canadian firm Brookfield Asset Management also targeted Europe’s AI and digital infrastructure market. Brookfield pledged about $28.2 billion in greenfield FDI in 2025, primarily for projects in France and Sweden. Its announced investments are expected to create roughly 4,800 jobs.
Learn More on the Voronoi App
For a breakdown of the sectors driving global FDI, check out The Top 10 Sectors for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on Voronoi.
