Thread

AI needs $6T in annual revenue to justify data centre boom

222 points · 335 comments · Betelbuddy

bunderbunder · 1790711630 · focus · HN ↗
They talk a bit about where the AI companies are supposed to get their revenue from. I’d like to see these analyses go a step further and talk about how those AI customers are supposed to come up with that money as well.
For example, the article suggests $1T from enterprise productivity tooling. A quick Google suggests the global enterprise productivity tooling market is only worth about $0.1T right now.
Do we really expect all the world’s corporations to suddenly up their annual spend by 1,000% on average? Why?
1. Legend2440 · 1790712395 · focus · HN ↗
  Keep in mind wealth is not a fixed thing. If AI makes their businesses more productive, it would allow the creation of more wealth, giving them more money to pay for AI with.
  This of course hinges on the big if: does AI create wealth? I think yes, but maybe not $6 trillion of it in five years.
  1. kergonath · 1790713939 · focus · HN ↗
    > This of course hinges on the big if: does AI create wealth? I think yes, but maybe not $6 trillion of it in five years.
    There is also the question of time scale. Growing a market takes time. Assuming the numbers above are the right order of magnitude, we are not going from 0.1 to 1 in a year. So even if the number would make sense over longer time frames, it can still be unsustainable for a significant amount of time before that.
    Like the Internet at the end if the 1990s, basically.

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