Economy / Markets
Consumer AI still has few paying customers, and the maths is unforgiving
An analysis of Andreessen Horowitz and PNC data published by TechCrunch found that as of May only 2.2% of consumers were paying for AI services, spending an average of $31 a month. Taking Netflix as a benchmark for a saturated online service, the piece calculated that 325 million subscribers at about $34 each would yield roughly $11 billion a year, less than a third of OpenAI's operating costs. Major labs have pivoted toward enterprise contracts, and OpenAI's enterprise bookings have reportedly doubled since July.