Artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI have been quick to unveil plans for spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centres, but they have been slower to show how they will pull in revenue to cover all those expenses. Now, the consulting firm Bain & Co is estimating the shortfall could be far larger than previously understood.
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By 2030, AI companies will need US$2 trillion in combined annual revenue to fund the computing power needed to meet projected demand, Bain said in its annual Global Technology Report released on Tuesday.
Yet their revenue is likely to fall US$800 billion short of that mark, as efforts to monetise services like ChatGPT and other generative AI services trail the spending requirements for data centres and related infrastructure, Bain predicted.
The report is set to raise further questions about the AI industry’s valuations and business model.
The increasing popularity of services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, as well as AI efforts by companies across the planet, means demand for computing capacity and energy is rising at a rapid pace.
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However, the savings provided by AI and companies’ ability to generate additional revenue from AI are lagging behind that pace.