Notre Dame Professors Comment on AI Development

As of September 2026, 3.7 trillion dollars have been spent on investments into America’s major artificial intelligence (AI) companies, a figure nearly 12 percent of the U.S. GDP. However, the entire industry of AI is only projected to have produced 75 billion dollars in revenue this year, with major companies producing recent net losses of tens of billions of dollars. 

Just last year, OpenAI posted a net loss of 38.5 billion dollars. This summer, the company announced that they will spend 750 billion dollars on AI infrastructure through 2030. Many economists and financial experts worry that the operating and infrastructure costs of AI development are too high to justify such massive investments. 

A recent report from JP Morgan, the world’s largest investment bank, claimed that AI companies need to produce 650 billion dollars in revenue in order for investors to earn a 10 percent return on current AI investments. Seeing that Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI are only projected to generate 95 to 100 billion dollars in revenue and are currently spending nearly 725 billion dollars on infrastructure, many experts are concluding that several investors will begin to withdraw their investments.