Descriptions:
Azeem Azhar, founder of Exponential View and a Bloomberg contributor, presents the findings of a six-month research effort to reconstruct the demand side of the global AI economy — a notoriously opaque number given that the largest AI companies are private and hyperscalers don’t break out AI revenue cleanly. The headline finding: global AI sales excluding China reached $25 billion in Q1 2026, surpassing the $21 billion in depreciation on data center and chip investments during the same quarter. This may mark a genuine tipping point where AI revenue starts justifying the infrastructure buildout.
Annualizing current monthly revenue puts the run rate at $170 billion per year, growing at roughly 200% year-over-year — a pace Azhar’s team had modeled would slow but didn’t, largely because Anthropic accelerated faster than projected. Contextualizing against prior technology waves, Azhar notes that AI real revenues are growing approximately three times faster than the internet did and three times faster than mobile adoption.
Looking ahead, Azhar expects large enterprises to increasingly rotate toward open-source AI models as cost concerns mount around proprietary offerings from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. He anticipates that as “Main Street” businesses develop better AI implementation capabilities, enterprise adoption will deepen further, sustaining the growth trajectory even as the easy early wins are captured.
📺 Source: Bloomberg Technology · Published June 25, 2026
🏷️ Format: News Analysis
