J.P. Morgan calls out AI spend, says $650 billion in annual revenue required to deliver mere 10% return on AI buildout — equivalent to $35 payment from every iPhone user, or $180 from every Netflix subscriber 'in perpetuity'

A J.P. Morgan report suggests that the AI industry needs to make $650 billion in annual revenue to deliver a 10% return on investments that companies are expected to make through 2030. The report, shared by analyst Max Weinbach on X, equates this to an extra monthly recurring payment of $34.72 from every iPhone user or $180 from every Netflix subscriber.

Although this may sound attainable, you must consider that there are about 1.5 billion active iPhone users across the globe and more than 300 million paid Netflix subscribers. Although the estimated amount will still be divided between individual, corporate, and government users, that is still a massive number of paying subscribers, especially as many consumers aren’t yet convinced of the utility of AI PCs and smartphones.

The report suggests that AI growth won’t be constant, and that it might experience the same issue that plagued the telecom industry when it first started building fiber infrastructure. “The path from here to there will not just be ‘up and to the right,’” says the report. “Our biggest fear would be a repeat of the telecom and fiber buildout experience, where the revenue curve failed to materialize at a pace that justified continued investment.” Although OpenAI has reportedly already achieved a $20 billion annualized revenue run-rate, and Anthropic is eyeing $26 billion in revenue by 2026, these are just reports or targets by individual companies and haven’t translated into net profits just yet.

Furthermore, the report also highlighted that an unexpected breakthrough could drive overcapacity, which is also a risk that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talked about in a podcast with Microsoft chief Satya Nadella. This could lead to a compute overcapacity, wherein we will have massive AI data centers costing billions of dollars sitting idle because there is not enough demand to drive them.

While the report did not raise the often talked about AI bubble, this is one of the scenarios that many experts are highlighting. For example, former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said that businesses are yet to start materially benefiting from AI, while already disrupting the service provider industry as we know it today. And if the AI bubble pops, even companies that aren’t directly related to AI technologies will be affected by the crash, exposing nearly $20 trillion in market cap.

Still, the report from J.P. Morgan is not all doom and gloom; it mentioned, “Regardless, even if everything works, there will be (continued) spectacular winners, and probably some equally spectacular losers as well, given the amount of capital involved and winner-takes-all nature of portions of the AI ecosystem.” This meant that even if the AI bubble does not collapse, we could still potentially see massive failures from some of the biggest players in the AI industry today.

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