In 2023, Sequoia Capital’s David Cahn wrote a post titled “AI’s $200B Question,” where he estimated how much revenue the industry would need to justify the year’s investment. Even after ChatGPT’s blockbuster debut, $200 billion seemed like a lot. But every year Cahn reruns the number, it grows. In 2026, the estimate reached $1.5 trillion—which he says is likely an undercount—and $3 trillion total since ChatGPT. Those figures may soon look quaint. Another $7.5 trillion will be plowed into chips, data centers, and power in the next five years, John Greenwood, global head of infrastructure and real asset finance at Goldman Sachs, recently told The Information. The impact of this investment goes well beyond napkin math. Enormous data centers are planned or popping up across the US. A report from the International Data Center Authority estimates data centers now consume 6 percent of the country’s electricity. According to The Economist, AI spending is shaping up to be the biggest investment boom in history, surpassing railway, canal, and dot-com manias. All this amounts to a historic bet on AI. But it’s actually more specific than that: It’s a bet on a particular AI business model. The wager is that people will demand AI services in droves; most will pay for those services through ads or subscriptions; and their favorite products will be powered by proprietary models in data centers built for a handful of firms. If this proves out, then dollars invested meet up with dollars earned.