AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough • Hacker News Board

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#11

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

an0malous wrote: post #6

> A back-of-the-envelope calculation finds that covering aicapex through identifiable ai income requires revenue on the order of $2.5trn per year, more than tech’s entire combined revenue today. … > All these complex calculations roughly tally with a much simpler one: adding up the ai revenue of the firms selling most of the ai. Anthropic pulls in perhaps $75bn, annualised; Openai makes tens of billions; Google, via…

$2.5tn is about 8% of U.S. GDP. So a handful of AI firms really expect that they will become larger than the entire U.S. sectors of manufacturing, government, or healthcare?

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#12

Post by thisisthenewme » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

I kind of think the AI boom is the worst for (non-inference-providing) companies. If all companies are using the same "frontier" LLMs, and if they are competitive, what gives one an edge over the other? I think, just the people. Which was the same as before, but now with the additional AI spend that they can't cut, or they become less competitive.

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#13

Post by p-e-w » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

an0malous wrote: post #6

> A back-of-the-envelope calculation finds that covering aicapex through identifiable ai income requires revenue on the order of $2.5trn per year, more than tech’s entire combined revenue today. … > All these complex calculations roughly tally with a much simpler one: adding up the ai revenue of the firms selling most of the ai. Anthropic pulls in perhaps $75bn, annualised; Openai makes tens of billions; Google, via…

Why would capex need to be covered by income during a time of investment and infrastructure buildup? Did income from the Apollo program cover its expenses?

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#14

Post by api » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

iammjm wrote: post #3

“ According to Mr Yotzov’s study, nine in ten executives report no impact of ai on their firm’s productivity over the past three years.” Brutal stuff.

Here’s what I’ve seen: it can make skilled people more productive by acting like a “mech suit for your brain.”

For unskilled people, it creates a false sense of productivity, but if the user of the tech does not understand what they are doing they can’t apply the tool productively or judge its output or deal with the things beyond its ability.

So like all other tools before it: it works best in the hands of a skilled user.

Just like in all other fields.

There is no tool that makes an unskilled user skilled, but there are many that can amplify or extend the capability of skill.

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#15

Post by kachnuv_ocasek » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

calvinmorrison wrote: post #5

iammjm wrote: post #3

“ According to Mr Yotzov’s study, nine in ten executives report no impact of ai on their firm’s productivity over the past three years.” Brutal stuff.

If programmers play it right that'll be us working less and delivering the same results. Who said everything has to benefit the capital class?

What's the play for software engineers that lands them in a better place but doesn't leave money on the table for the capitalists?

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#16

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #4

iammjm wrote: post #3

“ According to Mr Yotzov’s study, nine in ten executives report no impact of ai on their firm’s productivity over the past three years.” Brutal stuff.

AI will probably end up reducing lots of firms productivity because costs to defend against cyber attack is gonna skyrocket. Even for tech firms writing more code (the only thing AI is really good at so far) doesn't scale linearly with profits

Particularly when you can't use Fable 5 to secure your software, you don't have access to Mythos 5, and you got your access to GLM-5.2 and other Chinese and/or open models capable of doing so taken away.

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#17

Post by andy99 » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #4

iammjm wrote: post #3

“ According to Mr Yotzov’s study, nine in ten executives report no impact of ai on their firm’s productivity over the past three years.” Brutal stuff.

AI will probably end up reducing lots of firms productivity because costs to defend against cyber attack is gonna skyrocket. Even for tech firms writing more code (the only thing AI is really good at so far) doesn't scale linearly with profits

Why would it obviously give attackers the upper hand? If we accept the premise that AI helps find vulns more efficiently, shouldn’t this be at least equally helpful in securing against attacks and make that increasingly efficient?

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#18

Post by nemomarx » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #11

an0malous wrote: post #6

> A back-of-the-envelope calculation finds that covering aicapex through identifiable ai income requires revenue on the order of $2.5trn per year, more than tech’s entire combined revenue today. … > All these complex calculations roughly tally with a much simpler one: adding up the ai revenue of the firms selling most of the ai. Anthropic pulls in perhaps $75bn, annualised; Openai makes tens of billions; Google, via…

$2.5tn is about 8% of U.S. GDP. So a handful of AI firms really expect that they will become larger than the entire U.S. sectors of manufacturing, government, or healthcare?

Investors expect that they will, I guess. If you really believe the strong ai use cases (like exponential improvements, or it replacing hundreds of knowledge workers at every company" then maybe this isn't unreasonable.

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#19

Post by philipwhiuk » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #11

an0malous wrote: post #6

> A back-of-the-envelope calculation finds that covering aicapex through identifiable ai income requires revenue on the order of $2.5trn per year, more than tech’s entire combined revenue today. … > All these complex calculations roughly tally with a much simpler one: adding up the ai revenue of the firms selling most of the ai. Anthropic pulls in perhaps $75bn, annualised; Openai makes tens of billions; Google, via…

$2.5tn is about 8% of U.S. GDP. So a handful of AI firms really expect that they will become larger than the entire U.S. sectors of manufacturing, government, or healthcare?

The share price is based on them eliminating entire sectors yes.

Re: AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough

#20

Post by odyssey7 » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

thisisthenewme wrote: post #12

I kind of think the AI boom is the worst for (non-inference-providing) companies. If all companies are using the same "frontier" LLMs, and if they are competitive, what gives one an edge over the other? I think, just the people. Which was the same as before, but now with the additional AI spend that they can't cut, or they become less competitive.

In introductory economics courses, they teach a simple result showing that in a competitive market, profits tend toward zero.