Azeem Azhar

So how big could that AI market be?

Well, today, although it's relatively hard to measure estimates of the generative AI market in 2025,

end up as between about, let's say, $40 and $45 billion across infrastructure and apps, which is pretty remarkable considering there was none just a few years ago.

It means that OpenAI probably has a rather less than 30% share.

If they held that share through to 2030, that would imply $550, $580 billion in AI spend.

If they lost some of that share, which

would seem reasonable as competition emerges, that would imply an even bigger market approaching about $850, maybe $900 billion.

Again, I'm estimating these numbers a little bit.

None of this is financial advice.

This is a thought experiment.

Some of the major investment banks actually project

that $1 trillion level of spend within five years.

Now, look, that sounds like an astonishing number.

It's almost like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers film, you know, $1 trillion, although he was three orders of magnitude lower than that.

But let's see where we are today.

Roughly 9% of American firms claim to have a scale AI project up and running and delivering results.

Now that 9% may seem low to you, but it's very quick compared to what happened with the transition from co-located servers to the cloud.

To get to about 9% of firms was perhaps seven to nine years.

It was even quicker than the rate at which enterprises moved from non-smartphones to iPhones, which was probably a two to three year, maybe three to four year process.

And that 9% is a small portion.