The Coming AI Tax on Everything

Massive amounts of money are being spent to build out AI capabilities. It is possibly the most ambitious spending program in history. Yet even as the spend increases, people ask: How will AI companies pay for it all?

AI infrastructure spending has already surpassed the peak spending during the dot-com bubble and is still growing, according to Brian Merchant on Blood in the Machine. 

Over the last six months, capital expenditures on AI—counting just information processing equipment and software, by the way—added more to the growth of the US economy than all consumer spending combined. You can just pull any of those quotes out—spending on IT for AI is so big it might be making up for economic losses from the tariffs, serving as a private sector stimulus program.

The level of spend has started to attract a sort of fabulous attention, as though the spend is being made without anyone having any idea how the resulting infrastructure will be monetized to turn a profit, or even to break even.

Recent announcements have made it pretty clear how this will happen, and no, it won't be from savings in business process optimization by firing Brad and getting OpenAI to design the brochure for the company picnic instead.

Last week OpenAI announced the coming of an App store which will allow SaaS and Digital Retail to integrate directly into their AI Powered chat. I wrote about that in https://strategic-thinking-and-execution.ghost.io/the-new-new-ai-app-store-land-rush/ : here it is again:

This week Walmart announced it is partnering with OpenAI: Walmart says customers will soon be able to use ChatGPT to shop.

Walmart handles about 2.24% of global retail trade, based on its 2024 retail revenue of $675.6 billion against the total global retail revenue of approximately $30.2 trillion. This is according to Capital One Shopping. The OpenAI quote about the new partnership is wonderful:

“We’re excited to partner with Walmart to make everyday purchases a little simpler. It’s just one way AI will help people every day under our work together,” Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, said in a statement.

When you put it that way, the play here seems very obvious. Simply insert AI chat into every possible commercial transaction occurring digitally anywhere on the planet. The ability to siphon off a small portion of each and every mediated transaction makes the revenue requirements for AI seem pretty reasonable.

It is in one way breathtakingly ambitious plan: monetize everything bought by anyone anywhere. The potential to consolidate wealth on a global scale by tapping into and ultimately controlling existing digital commerce streams is surely what is driving investors to back the ludicrous spend currently under way.

On another more mundane plane the implications are also very clear: every online purchase mediated by AI will be subject to what is effectively an AI tax. The ultimate convenience fee, levied on everyone, everywhere, every time. The coming AI tax on everything.