AI Race 2026: Money is flowing, but the bubble question remains 📈🤖
Q3 2025 showed a significant shift: AI has stopped being just a 'trendy expense' 💸 — industry leaders are now seeing real revenue 📊
💡 Who's ahead:
• Microsoft Azure ☁️: ~$18.5 billion annual AI revenue
— AI service sales have doubled in one year ⏫
— and increased fourfold since early 2024 🚀
• OpenAI 🧠: ~$13 billion revenue
— growth of more than four times in one and a half years 🔥
📉 Who's falling behind:
• xAI and Nebius (Elon Musk) 🧑🚀
— revenue < $1 billion per year
— hardware purchased 🖥, capacity available ⚡
— but monetization is lagging ⏳
🌍 Key market issue:
The gap between investments in data centers 🏗 and actual revenue 💰 (revenue gap) remains significant.
It's precisely this gap that fuels the bubble discussion 🫧
📌 If current trends continue, OpenAI could smoothly approach an IPO with an estimated valuation of around $830 billion 💎