Institutions: AI industry revenue has reached a critical tipping point, with hundreds of billions of dollars in AI investment starting to generate commercial returns.

According to a report from research firm Exponential View, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry has reached a critical revenue inflection point, marking initial validation of the business model where tech companies have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into building AI infrastructure in recent years. The report shows that AI-related revenue from global hyperscale and emerging cloud service providers has hit roughly $25 billion, marking the second consecutive quarter that this figure has exceeded the estimated depreciation costs of AI data centers and chips, which stand at around $21 billion. This milestone means revenue generated by the AI industry has started to offset cost pressures from infrastructure capital investment, as the AI economy transitions from an expansion phase relying solely on capital expenditure to a revenue validation stage. Exponential View notes that current AI revenue primarily stems from AI cloud services, GPU computing power rentals, large language model APIs, enterprise AI software, and generative AI applications. As corporate clients continue to increase their AI spending, AI commercialization is accelerating. However, the report also points out that the AI industry is still far from achieving high profitability. Due to high costs for GPUs, data centers, electricity, and model development, industry profit margins remain limited; current revenue is more about validating the sustainability of infrastructure investment rather than generating large-scale profits. The core competition in the AI industry will shift from "whether real demand exists" to "which companies can achieve large-scale profitability amid fierce competition". As model capabilities improve and costs decline, AI service prices may fall further, so enterprises need to boost profit margins through more efficient application scenarios and business models.