The real revenue of the AI economy reached $110 billion: growth analytics and bottlenecks
The artificial intelligence sector is showing impressive momentum: over the past 12 months, the real revenue of the AI industry, after excluding double counting, amounted to $110 billion. The current annual run rate has already reached $175 billion. These figures are the result of a deep analysis conducted by my team based on open data and proprietary models.
Methodology: How We Calculated
The key principle is that each dollar is counted only once. For example, $1 spent by a user on Claude is recorded as final expenditure, even if part of that amount later goes to an infrastructure provider (Amazon or another). The metric is measured by end-customer spending, not by revenue along the entire supply chain. China, internal AI spending, advertising effects, consulting, and system integration are excluded from the calculations. This provides a clean, non-inflated picture.
Growth Rates: AI Faster Than the Internet
The AI industry is growing roughly three times faster than the adoption waves of mobile technology or the internet. Each new $1 billion in revenue now appears in less than two days, whereas in 2023 it took 180 days. Corporate AI has moved beyond pilot projects: mentions of AI in earnings calls have reached 31% of tracked companies in the S&P 500 index. However, only 20% of firms have made quantitative statements about AI's impact on their business—measurable effects are still confirmed by a minority.
Infrastructure Economics and Price Elasticity
Revenue from cloud giants currently roughly covers AI infrastructure depreciation, but the economics of GPUs heavily depend on the assumption of a six-year lifespan. The rest of the AI infrastructure is modeled over 14 years. This creates risks of asset overvaluation.
Price elasticity of demand for AI tokens has proven to be high: each 10% decrease in token price leads to a 12–18% increase in its consumption. Cost reduction expands usage faster than value declines—a powerful signal for the market.
Key Constraints
Further scaling is constrained by electricity availability and data center costs. These factors will limit the growth of the AI economy in the future. Compiling these calculations took several months of meticulous work.
Expert Comment from Cryptalist: The numbers confirm that AI is not a bubble, but a genuinely functioning sector with elastic demand. However, investors should closely monitor infrastructure costs—they will become the key driver or brake for the entire industry over the next 2-3 years.