By Martin Baccardax
OpenAI is expected to spend nearly half a trillion dollars by 2030, according to analysts at New Street Research, as it looks to extend the lead of its ChatGPT chatbot in an increasingly competitive market for consumer artificial intelligence.
Spending could rise to an annual rate of $100 billion by 2028, New Street's Dan Salmon and Max Spaeth said in a note published late Thursday, and sustain that pace into the end of the decade.
Anthropic, which trails far behind OpenAI with its Claude chatbot, is expected to spend nearly $150 billion over the same period, with both groups adding tailwinds to revenue growth rates at both Amazon and Alphabet.
"OpenAI spend will be spread across a more diverse vendor base, anchored by Oracle and Microsoft, given its legacy investment," the pair said. "For the remaining spend, we expect [Google Cloud] and AWS to continue competing with neo-cloud providers such as CoreWeave.
"We still see Anthropic spend led by AWS and [Google Cloud], but Azure is now also a provider, and we believe the door is open to others over time," the pair added.
Amazon, which signed a 7-year, $38 billion partnership with OpenAI last November, will likely see an increased share of that company's spending, which will boost its underlying revenue growth, even though the bulk of it remains committed to Oracle and the U.S. government-backed AI project called Stargate.
"The remaining external compute spend will likely skew toward Microsoft and will likely have significant participation from neo-cloud providers as well," Salmon and Spaeth said.
"For AWS we model 15% share of non-Oracle/Stargate spending in 2026, rising to 38% by 2030 based on the recent long-term $38 billion contract, " the pair said. "We model the share of addressable spend for Google Cloud beginning at 3% ( given announced TPU testing in 2025) and rising to 20% by 2027."
In fact, New Street sees accelerating workloads, powered in part by previous investments in chips and data centers, already starting to pay off.
Revenue growth for AWS likely rose 23% over the fourth quarter of last year, the pair said, a rate that's around 2 percentage points ahead of Wall Street forecasts. Google Cloud's fourth quarter growth rate is pegged at 36.6%, just ahead of the consensus estimate of 35.9%.
"We think AWS revenue growth will continue to be the primary driver of the stock in 2026, and our Street-high revenue outlook underpins our 'top pick' designation," the pair wrote in a report published late Thursday.
Amazon, which reports its December quarter earnings on Feb. 5, notably underperformed the S&P 500 last year, rising only around 5% compared to a 17% gain for the benchmark.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post, however, thinks "AI sentiment could improve in 2026, with AWS growth likely to accelerate due to new capacity."
"For long-term investors, if Amazon's proprietary tech improves vs competitors, AWS's AI positioning as a lower--cost provider could become a meaningful advantage as enterprises focus on AI inference cost efficiency," he added in a recent note on the stock.
OpenAI is expected to contribute around 3% of AWS's projected $155 billion in 2026 revenue. For Google Cloud, New Street sees it at around 2%.
Anthropic's overall 2026 revenue contribution will be $5 billion for Google Cloud and around $6.1 billion for AWS.
Alphabet shares were the standout performer in the Magnificent Seven cohort last year, rising 65% and topping the $4 trillion threshold in terms of market value. The group posts its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 6.
"[Google Cloud] is also becoming a bigger contributor to the Alphabet story -- particularly now as the TPU advantage is better understood by the Street."
Post at Bank of America agrees.
"AI as a new paradigm for economic growth and the top investment theme for the next 5 years," he said. "As Google continues to demonstrate durable competitive advantage across models, infrastructure, and distribution, investor confidence in the company's AI assets and execution could continue to improve, supporting a growing valuation premium."
Write to Martin Baccardax at martin.baccardax@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 16, 2026 07:53 ET (12:53 GMT)
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