The generative AI economy pulled in more than $110 billion in sales over the past year. That is not a projection, a TAM fantasy, or a McKinsey slide deck estimate. It is the central finding of Exponential View’s inaugural State of the AI Economy report, published June 25, 2026.
Here’s the thing: the sector’s annualized revenue run rate now exceeds $175 billion.
What the numbers actually say
The report, led by Exponential View founder Azeem Azhar, is built on AI spending data from over 1,000 companies. The figures were adjusted to avoid double counting, a detail that matters more than it sounds. In AI revenue discussions, the same dollar often gets claimed by the cloud provider, the model maker, and the enterprise software layer simultaneously. Stripping that out gives you a cleaner picture.
In Q1 2026, global AI sales outside of China hit approximately $25 billion. That single-quarter figure surpasses the estimated $21 billion in quarterly depreciation costs on data centers and chip infrastructure that companies have been racking up. In English: the money coming in is now larger than the cost of the buildings and hardware wearing out.
