The AI Economy Hit $110 Billion — and It's Growing 3x Faster Than the Internet
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View team has published the first comprehensive analysis that rebuilds the generative-AI economy "from the bottom up." Once double-counting is stripped out, the picture is clear: AI generated $110 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, running at a $175 billion annualized rate based on the latest month.
In brief
- Growth: AI revenue is growing roughly 3x faster than the mobile or internet waves.
- A fragile balance: the hyperscalers' (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) AI infrastructure revenues only just clear their depreciation expense — economics that are "borderline sustainable." (The math assumes 6-year depreciation for compute, 14 years for other infrastructure.)
- Price elasticity: every 10% price cut raises token consumption by 12–18%; even as per-token prices fall, total spending rises.
- Executive pressure: half of the CEOs surveyed believe their job depends on getting their AI strategy right.
Our take
The concrete thing here for you: the per-unit cost of AI keeps falling. An automation you gave up on today as "too expensive" can pencil out a few months from now. The smart play isn't to set AI up once and forget it — it's to keep re-testing the tasks that used to look impossible as prices drop. And the industry's fragile balance is a reminder that this cheapness isn't guaranteed forever; there's an open window worth using now.
Kaynak: Exponential View