| “Railway mania” in the UK in the 1840s and 1860s “involved capital investments of 15% to 20% of GDP”. US GDP is around $30 trillion. [0] Between 1900 and 1929 the total capital invested in rail stocks and bonds in the US grew from $10.8bn (against GDP of $21.2bn) to $21.4bn [1] (1929 GDP was $104.6 billion). [2] So the current AI capex doesn’t really seem too far fetched by comparison. Apple’s revenue went from $13.9bn in 2005 to $391bn in 2024. Google’s revenue went from $6.1bn to $348bn over the same period. Microsoft’s revenue was $197.5m in 1986, $345.9m in 1987, $591m in 1988, $804.5m in 1989, $1183m in 1990, $1843m in 1991, $14.5bn by 1998 and $19.75bn in 1999. So revenue 10x’d from ‘86 to ‘91 and again from ‘91 to ‘99. Those are all nominal unadjusted figures, but all three companies are arguably “category defining”. For OpenAI to go from public launch to what looks like ~$12 billion projected annualised revenue so quickly says quite a lot. If it only follows the Microsoft trajectory that would be $120bn by 2030. But going back to the railways point: the impact of railways wasn’t measured in the revenue of just one company, but rather across the whole physical supply chain. If you assume that AI could be as transformative to the digital supply chain (and everything it touches) then you could argue that investments of 20% of global GDP wouldn’t be crazy. (Though, railway mania, 1929 crash, etc…) [0] https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania18.pdf [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Composition-of-capital-r... [2] https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/usgdp/result.php?use... |