I was looking at the AI market size data. Global market is around $244 billion in 2025. Growing at 27-30 percent annually. Projected to hit $827 billion by 2030. That’s a tripling in five years.
Sounds impressive, right? But then I started thinking. What are companies actually paying for?
They’re not paying for one thing. They’re paying for cloud compute. For APIs. For software licenses. For hiring consultants. For infrastructure. For experimentation. For models that may or may not work.
And here’s the weird part. Most of them can’t tell you what they’re getting back.
I looked at the data. 89 percent of enterprises have adopted AI tools. But only 23 percent can accurately measure the return on investment.
Think about that. Imagine if you spent $244 billion across thousands of companies on something, and three-quarters of the money isn’t being measured at all. You’d have no idea if it was working.
This is the silent crisis nobody is talking about. The AI market isn’t growing because of proven returns. It’s growing because everyone is terrified of being left behind. “We need to do AI” has become the default corporate position. Whether or not it makes business sense is almost secondary.
It reminds me of the cloud computing boom. Companies started migrating to the cloud because everyone was doing it. Actual cost savings? Took years to quantify. Many companies are still spending more on cloud than they would have on-premises.
AI is following the same pattern. Hype-driven adoption. Measurement lagging far behind spending.
The trillion-dollar question isn’t whether AI will be worth it. The question is: who will figure out ROI measurement first and dominate the next decade?