Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts

Expenditure is growing fast and consumer take-up accelerating. But alarm bells are sounding

The race is very much on. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which makes AI models as well as space rockets, announced last week it is . OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is expected to follow.

This latest peak in the AI market comes amid a multitrillion-dollar spending spree on related infrastructure such as datacentres. Meanwhile, companies are attempting to deploy the technology in a way that makes investing in it worthwhile. Here’s a look at what stage the AI boom is at and six key charts that tell us how we got here.