AI consumer surplus estimated at 3x that of coffee
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-08-21
Despite coffee having 2x consumer surplus per user and 1.5x the user base, the aggregate consumer surplus for Gen AI is estimated at 3x that of coffee.
The post compares production costs: $13B annually for US coffee supply vs. $14B for OpenAI's recent expenses (scaling to $35B to include Anthropic/Google globally).
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