Azeem Azhar

And the indirect gains are very likely to be undercounted.

There are some analysts and investment banks who have a much higher number for Gen AI revenues in 2025 than we do.

But given our number, about $60 billion in revenues, 15% coverage, I'll say this gauge is in the amber.

Revenue trajectory is also important to keep an eye on.

So this gauge measures the speed and breadth of revenue growth and whether that momentum is accelerating or slowing down.

If strong momentum drives revenues up, it absorbs depreciation, it repays capex, and stagnation has preceded past busts.

Rail revenue growth was weak into the 1870s crash.

Telecoms was growing faster in the 1990s, but not enough compared to the scale of leverage that they had taken on.

The dot-coms were growing, but probably in the high tens of percents.

When we look at Gen AI today, we are seeing even the very big companies like Anthropic and OpenAI growing at 80%, 100%, 200% per annum and looking at very fast growth rate into 2026.

When we look at a cohort of big Gen AI startups that are not yet public and much smaller than OpenAI and Anthropic, we count about $18 to $20 billion of revenues in 2025, substantially above last year.

And some of these companies are growing at 4%, 500%, 600%, 700% per annum.

So on a conservative path, I think Gen AI could easily reach $100 billion in revenues by 2026, possibly even more.

Enterprises are really early in their adoption, so too are consumers.

And despite that, new data centers are running at a very high utilization as they come online.

The gauge that measures revenue trajectory is definitely in the green.

So this gauge looks at how far asset prices are running ahead of earnings.

Let's use a simple proxy price to earnings ratios and some other measures.

Extreme multiples can only persist if earnings outrun gravity.

Overheating is a classic bubble tell of too many investors chasing a story, not fundamentals.