For decades, when you thought of Mexican exports to the US, you thought of cars. That era just ended.

Mexico’s AI infrastructure exports reached a record $105.8 billion from January to May 2026, representing an 84.5% year-on-year surge that, for the first time ever, eclipsed the country’s legendary automotive shipments. Factories assembling servers, networking gear, and other data center hardware are now the beating heart of the Mexican export economy.

The nearshoring play that actually worked

Global contract manufacturers including Foxconn, Flex, Jabil, and Sanmina have all set up operations in Mexico, assembling AI hardware destined for US hyperscale data center operators. Foreign direct investment in Mexico’s manufacturing sector hit $40.9 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, climbing 15% year-on-year as companies raced to establish production closer to their biggest customer.

The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, laid the groundwork for this shift. But it was the cocktail of pandemic disruptions, rising tariffs on Chinese imports, and the explosive demand for AI compute that turned a slow migration into a stampede.

AWS alone has pledged more than $5 billion toward its new Mexico (Central) Region, with data center facilities in Querétaro projected to come online around 2025.

The numbers in context

To put $105.8 billion in five months into perspective, that’s an annualized run rate north of $250 billion. Mexico’s entire goods export total to the US was roughly $400 billion annually in recent years. AI hardware is on track to become, by itself, a majority of the bilateral trade relationship.

The FDI figures tell a similar story. At $40.9 billion in manufacturing investment over just nine months, the 15% year-on-year growth rate suggests the trend is still accelerating rather than plateauing.

What investors should watch

The most immediate beneficiaries are the contract manufacturers themselves. Foxconn, Flex, Jabil, and Sanmina all have publicly traded equities, and their Mexican operations are increasingly material to their revenue mix.

The risk factor worth monitoring is Mexico’s infrastructure capacity. Power and water constraints remain real bottlenecks for data center expansion.