AI Revenue in Perspective | Apollo Global

We estimate AI end-user revenue must climb to a range of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion by 2030.

... Based on some back-of-the-envelope math incorporating hyperscaler guidance, announced projects, and third-party demand projections, we estimate that the market is currently expecting $4 trillion to $5 trillion of digital infrastructure investment by 2030. For this investment to deliver an acceptable return, we further estimate that annual AI revenue must climb to a range of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion by 2030. Some of this revenue will come from GPU-accelerated improvements to existing software workloads, like better advertising models and recommendation engines, but the bulk will have to come from genuinely new AI-driven products and services. We estimate that revenue from these new AI applications was only $35 billion to $65 billion in 2025.

For context, $2 trillion of revenue is equal to the total size of the global enterprise software and online advertising markets combined. Admittedly, these industries do not have the ambition of AI which hopes to automate a large portion of the $60 trillion in global knowledge workforce compensation. Through that lens, $2 trillion represents only ~3% penetration: ambitious, but not mathematically implausible. Either way, the industry has a very steep revenue hill to climb, and we are watching its progress closely...