AI labs’ revenue per gigawatt roughly matches US GDP per gigawatt in snapshot

A snapshot estimate puts US GDP at about $60–65 billion per continuously consumed gigawatt, using roughly 500 gigawatts of US electricity consumption and 2025 GDP just above $30 trillion. OpenAI and Anthropic were reportedly each generating about $60–70 billion in annual recurring revenue with around one gigawatt of live capacity, though both had substantially more capacity under contract. The comparison is approximate: lab revenue is not equivalent to GDP, which measures value added and also captures some downstream activity.

A separate estimate argued that a 1% rise in power use could correspond to roughly 1% GDP growth, putting 10 gigawatts at about 2% of GDP; SpaceX had publicly discussed adding that much capacity, estimated in the cited discussion at about a quarter of all new US power additions. The economic return could shift as labs add contracted capacity, while more efficient GPUs, algorithms, tool use and long-running agents could increase useful output per watt. A historical chart cited in the discussion showed US real GDP per average electric watt falling from 1929 to a low around 1970, then rising through the mid-1970s to the present.