The AI boom is pushing revenue forecasts sharply higher. One company could reach a once-unthinkable milestone as soon as 2028.
SpaceX aims for $1 trillion in sales by 2030, maybe sooner. But Elon Musk's rocket and AI company probably won't be the first to hit that massive milestone. Nvidia could get there a year earlier-and Amazon could beat them both.
"And it's probably also worth mentioning that our internal projections for reaching $1 trillion in revenue... have moved up from 2031 to 2030," said Musk on SpaceX's inaugural earnings conference call on Aug. 4. "So prior to the IPO, the financial projections we had were reaching $1 trillion in revenue in 2031. We now expect that to be in 2030. And there's a nonzero chance of that being in 2029."
Musk is never one to shy away from big projections. Still, the company is a long way from $1 trillion. SpaceX is expected to generate about $44 billion in 2026 sales, according to FactSet, growing to an impressive $100 billion in 2027.
(S&P 500 sales total about $20 trillion.)
AI is driving most of that growth. AI revenue is expected to be about $21 billion in 2026 and $65 billion in 2027. That boom is rapidly pushing revenue expectations higher across some of the world's biggest technology companies.
Nvidia reported better-than-expected earnings on Wednesday evening. The headline news was that Nvidia expects 70% sales growth in calendar year 2027. Wall Street was looking for closer to 45% growth.
"This time last year, one lab alone was driving the buildout; today, we have a golden age of new AI labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling in parallel, a thriving open-model ecosystem and physical AI coming online," said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
The faster growth expectations are already rippling through Wall Street forecasts. Analysts now see Nvidia sales topping $1 trillion by calendar year 2029. Just a few weeks ago, analysts expected Nvidia to generate $866 billion in 2029 sales.
The reason for the rapid revisions is increasingly apparent in Nvidia's customers, which are scrambling to build the computing capacity needed to compete in AI. Alphabet's cloud business grew 82% year over year in the second quarter. Anthropic's annual revenue run-rate-a closely watched measure of AI startup growth-is currently estimated to be north of $65 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025.
Anthropic has even had to rent computing capacity from SpaceX to meet demand. Alphabet's cloud services backlog at the end of the second quarter was $514 billion, up almost 400% year over year. That represents enterprises locking in AI services for the future.
"Our highest conviction view: the demand for compute is likely to significantly exceed supply for many years to come," says Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd.
That demand has put Nvidia on track to beat SpaceX to $1 trillion in annual revenue. One company might beat both, though. Amazon.com is expected to hit $1 trillion in sales by 2028, according to FactSet.
Amazon has an advantage in the race: It is already one of the world's largest retailers, while its cloud and AI business is growing rapidly. It's a little like being Walmart and Microsoft combined. (That pair is expected to have a combined $1.3 trillion in 2028 sales.)
Amazon Web Services sales, which include its AI business, are expected to rise to $320 billion by 2028, up from $174 billion in 2026. Amazon's enormous retail operation is what gives it the edge: The business is expected to generate almost $800 billion in sales that year.
SpaceX faces the steepest climb. Analysts project its AI sales will reach $135 billion in 2028, but Wall Street isn't yet aligned with Musk on the company's longer-term growth potential.
Who hits $1 trillion first ultimately doesn't matter all that much. (It might matter to the billionaires running the companies.) The growth driving them toward that milestone does. And revenue isn't the be-all. Nvidia has higher profit margins than Amazon.
What all of these massive numbers show is that the era of $1 trillion in annual sales is approaching, fueled in large part by an AI computing boom that is driving demand for Nvidia chips, cloud services and computing capacity.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@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
By Al Root
The AI boom is pushing revenue forecasts sharply higher. One company could reach a once-unthinkable milestone as soon as 2028.
SpaceX aims for $1 trillion in sales by 2030, maybe sooner. But Elon Musk's rocket and AI company probably won't be the first to hit that massive milestone. Nvidia could get there a year earlier-and Amazon could beat them both.
"And it's probably also worth mentioning that our internal projections for reaching $1 trillion in revenue... have moved up from 2031 to 2030," said Musk on SpaceX's inaugural earnings conference call on Aug. 4. "So prior to the IPO, the financial projections we had were reaching $1 trillion in revenue in 2031. We now expect that to be in 2030. And there's a nonzero chance of that being in 2029."
Musk is never one to shy away from big projections. Still, the company is a long way from $1 trillion. SpaceX is expected to generate about $44 billion in 2026 sales, according to FactSet, growing to an impressive $100 billion in 2027.
(S&P 500 sales total about $20 trillion.)
AI is driving most of that growth. AI revenue is expected to be about $21 billion in 2026 and $65 billion in 2027. That boom is rapidly pushing revenue expectations higher across some of the world's biggest technology companies.
Nvidia reported better-than-expected earnings on Wednesday evening. The headline news was that Nvidia expects 70% sales growth in calendar year 2027. Wall Street was looking for closer to 45% growth.
"This time last year, one lab alone was driving the buildout; today, we have a golden age of new AI labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling in parallel, a thriving open-model ecosystem and physical AI coming online," said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
The faster growth expectations are already rippling through Wall Street forecasts. Analysts now see Nvidia sales topping $1 trillion by calendar year 2029. Just a few weeks ago, analysts expected Nvidia to generate $866 billion in 2029 sales.
The reason for the rapid revisions is increasingly apparent in Nvidia's customers, which are scrambling to build the computing capacity needed to compete in AI. Alphabet's cloud business grew 82% year over year in the second quarter. Anthropic's annual revenue run-rate-a closely watched measure of AI startup growth-is currently estimated to be north of $65 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025.
Anthropic has even had to rent computing capacity from SpaceX to meet demand. Alphabet's cloud services backlog at the end of the second quarter was $514 billion, up almost 400% year over year. That represents enterprises locking in AI services for the future.
"Our highest conviction view: the demand for compute is likely to significantly exceed supply for many years to come," says Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd.
That demand has put Nvidia on track to beat SpaceX to $1 trillion in annual revenue. One company might beat both, though. Amazon.com is expected to hit $1 trillion in sales by 2028, according to FactSet.
Amazon has an advantage in the race: It is already one of the world's largest retailers, while its cloud and AI business is growing rapidly. It's a little like being Walmart and Microsoft combined. (That pair is expected to have a combined $1.3 trillion in 2028 sales.)
Amazon Web Services sales, which include its AI business, are expected to rise to $320 billion by 2028, up from $174 billion in 2026. Amazon's enormous retail operation is what gives it the edge: The business is expected to generate almost $800 billion in sales that year.
SpaceX faces the steepest climb. Analysts project its AI sales will reach $135 billion in 2028, but Wall Street isn't yet aligned with Musk on the company's longer-term growth potential.
Who hits $1 trillion first ultimately doesn't matter all that much. (It might matter to the billionaires running the companies.) The growth driving them toward that milestone does. And revenue isn't the be-all. Nvidia has higher profit margins than Amazon.
What all of these massive numbers show is that the era of $1 trillion in annual sales is approaching, fueled in large part by an AI computing boom that is driving demand for Nvidia chips, cloud services and computing capacity.
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