Redditor's bottom-up estimate puts consumer AI revenue ceiling around $36B a year
jacob_fw · reddit · 2026-09-28
Frustrated by what he sees as unfounded analyses on both bull and bear sides of the AI bubble debate, a Reddit user did his own bottom-up estimate of how much revenue AI could actually generate — invoking the Tycho Brahe/Rothmann parallax debate to argue that the "absurdity" claim must be demonstrated, not just asserted.
Key numbers so far:
- Direct consumer spend: using "revenue per user minute" from comparable services (YouTube $0.0018, Meta $0.003, Netflix $0.0039; average $0.002), and generously assuming 330M people use AI 2.5 hours daily, annual revenue tops out around $36 billion — far below the hundreds of billions being invested;
- Software development: anchored on Uber capping developer AI spend at $1,500/user/month per provider, against $300k engineer salaries (post cut off mid-calculation).
He disclaims professional expertise, says ideas and math are his own with AI only helping gather stats, and invites corrections.
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