Posted on 10/01/2026 6:39:01 PM PDT by Mariner
Artificial intelligence companies will need to generate at least $4.2 trillion in new annual revenue by 2031 to financially support the industry’s massive infrastructure buildout, according to an analysis from Bain & Company.
The AI industry would need roughly $6 trillion in annual revenue by 2031 to support projected spending on data centers, chips and computing infrastructure, according to Bain. Uses that can be identified today are projected to generate only about $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion annually, leaving at least $4.2 trillion that would have to come from new products, robotics, autonomous systems and other applications.
The $6 trillion figure is not a forecast of how much revenue AI companies will actually generate. Rather, it represents Bain’s estimate of the revenue required to fund the amount of computing investment currently projected for the industry.
The enormous gap highlights the scale of the bet technology companies are making as they pour hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure before many of the products expected to eventually pay for it have been developed.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Where is that $4.2trillion ANNUAL going to come from?
It's just 5 years out.
I pay Anthropic $100 a month to take 10-30 work hours a month off my schedule.
I can’t train anyone in 30 hours to do replicate that let alone do the job as nearly trouble free.
I know that $100 and $200 a month customers cost them money so I don’t know where a profitable revenue stream ever comes from this.
The AI bubble burst will be the Krakatoa of financial bubbles.
"AI didn't just break the mold today—it shattered it."
"We're witnessing history."
"This is a paradigm shift."
We want to be the first to talk to the aliens, before the ChiComs.
I might sign up for $50 subscription.
Multiply that by 300 million Americans and you have.....
....a few $billions.
How much water will be wasted on this ai garbage? Serious question.
I use the free versions of chatgpt, grok, copilot, gemini, google ai.
When I figure out how to use the LLM’s you can download now and the program that runs them then I can do the work from my local pc.
Only people making videos and business’s will need the big guys and the AI companies won’t ever come close to making enough money they will need to survive.
This is not an amount necessary to be profitable. It is simply to fund the construction. If you ask questions like what is the net present value of this investment what is the expected rate of return going to be? You will only get very vague answers that eventually degrade into segments will make money. The segments that will make money are the companies that are supplying the products and services for this massive build out. Nowhere in the answer is any hint that the industry itself may actually make money selling AI products
Where Willard Milquetoast Mittens sold his soul. It is normal that more than 90% of big AI startups will fail, just like it is normal 90% of new restaurants you try will fail to capture your fancy. Like good and evil itself, that's a fact of life, an emergent property of consciousness
Bain specializes in identifying companies failing due to incompetent management, then loading up the victim business with debt and enshitifying all their products to suck all the blood out of the failing business for great profit. Bain just can't wait.
It's not a good idea to get investment advice from people with a pessimistic conservative disposition. While that personality developed to survive harsh winters, it does not lend well to investing in the most significant technology leap in human history, if not the entire galaxy.
Many of the best business minds have done the math, and AI is the real deal. This is big.
The enormous gap highlights the scale of the bet technology companies are making
the law of diminishing returns says the first one is a good return on investment, the second not as much and the last one is a cost center.
Well, I guess all the AI’s are going to have to get a second job.
According to Musk, AI will add roughly $20 to $30 trillion annually to the global economic output.
toddausauras wrote: “How much water will be wasted on this ai garbage? Serious question.”
Serious answer, less than will be ‘wasted’ on golf courses.
Selling Girl Scout Cookies. They have a decent profit margin and those thin mints are irresistible.
WHEN YOU NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO ANYONE WHO CAN DO THE WORK YOU REFER TO-—AI CAN RAISE THAT $100 TO ANY PRICE THEY WISH—AND YOU ARE STUCK....
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