Callum Williams(@econcallum):World seems to have woken up to the idea that AI capex actually needs a return at some point. People now realise that roughly $2-3trn of revenue will be needed annually, quite soon. But the conversation about what counts as "AI revenue" is still highly unsophisticated. People will say e.g. "Amazon's cloud business is doing really well, ergo AI is seeing great ROI". No. What you need is revenue EXTERNAL or DOWNSTREAM to the system, ie from ordinary businesses subscribing to models. @darioperkins good on this. A lot of Amazon cloud revenue is just Anthropic buying stuff How much is "proper" AI revenue? In the summer we made four estimates. We need more work to make these estimates better/more accurate! @hsu

2026.09.27 19:47

World seems to have woken up to the idea that AI capex actually needs a return at some point. People now realise that roughly $2-3trn of revenue will be needed annually, quite soon. But the conversation about what counts as "AI revenue" is still highly unsophisticated. People will say e.g. "Amazon's cloud business is doing really well, ergo AI is seeing great ROI". No. What you need is revenue EXTERNAL or DOWNSTREAM to the system, ie from ordinary businesses subscribing to models. @darioperkins good on this. A lot of Amazon cloud revenue is just Anthropic buying stuff How much is "proper" AI revenue? In the summer we made four estimates. We need more work to make these estimates better/more accurate! @hsu_steve @lugaricano @weakinstrument