AI Revenue Growth Begins to Match Massive Data Center Spending

Revenue from artificial intelligence is beginning to offset the vast spending on chips and data centers, according to Exponential View. The firm’s new report shows that global AI sales, excluding China, reached $25 billion in the first quarter of 2026. That figure exceeded the industry’s estimated $21 billion in depreciation costs for a second straight quarter, suggesting the sector is starting to cover its infrastructure expenses.

Generative AI revenue totaled $110 billion over the past twelve months and is now on a $175 billion annualized run rate. The report’s dataset tracks spending across more than 1,000 companies, using public filings, executive statements, and cloud provider disclosures. It excludes chip manufacturing and advertising uplift to avoid double-counting between layers of the AI supply chain.

The analysis found that depreciation charges still consume about two thirds of revenue, leaving limited margin for other costs such as power and labor. However, demand remains strong. Rental prices for older NVIDIA GPUs like the H100 have stayed near 80 percent of their launch level, indicating persistent utilization despite new hardware releases.

The report also notes a shift among developers toward open-weight and Chinese models such as DeepSeek. Data from OpenRouter shows that the share of tokens processed by US models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI fell from 72 percent in mid-2025 to 33 percent in June 2026. This trend reflects users adopting lower-cost models for simpler workloads.

Exponential View concludes that AI demand is now more validated by realized revenue than any previous technology wave. Yet the industry’s ability to sustain its current pace will depend on how efficiently it can convert falling token prices and rapid hardware cycles into continued revenue growth.