Can AI Answer the $3T Question?
Three years ago, Sequoia partner David Cahn was one of the first to quantify the financial implications of Silicon Valley's massive AI infrastructure spending. Starting from Nvidia's $50B GPU revenue, he calculated that $200B in revenue would be needed to pay back the upfront investment.
Three years ago, Sequoia partner David Cahn was one of the first people to do the math and put a number on the implications of Silicon Valley’s titanic spend on AI infrastructure.
In 2023, he was reacting to Nvidia’s reported annual GPU revenue of $50 billion. Starting with that figure, and adding in the implied costs of operating the data centers and the margins for their operators, he deduced that $200 billion in revenue would be required to pay back the up-front investment.