The investment bank HSBC, while clarifying that it still believes AI is a “megacycle” and that its forecasts “indicate a leading position for OpenAI from a revenue standpoint,” nevertheless calculates that the company faces an extraordinary financial mountain if it is to deliver on its ambitions. HSBC Global Investment Research projects that OpenAI still won’t be profitable by 2030, even though its consumer base will grow by that point to comprise some 44% of the world’s adult population (up from 10% in 2025). Beyond that, it will need at least another $207 billion of compute to keep up with its growth plans. This stark assessment reflects soaring infrastructure costs, heightened competition, and an AI market that is surging in demand and cash-intensive to a degree beyond any technology trend in history.
HSBC projects that OpenAI’s cumulative free cash flow by 2030 will still be negative, leaving a $207 billion funding shortfall that must be filled through additional debt, equity, or more aggressive revenue generation. HSBC analysts model OpenAI’s cloud and AI infrastructure costs at $792 billion between late 2025 and 2030, with total compute commitments reaching $1.4 trillion by 2033 (HSBC notes that Altman has laid out a plan for $1.4 trillion in compute over the next eight years). It will have a $620 billion data-center rental bill alone.
Despite this, projected revenues—though growing rapidly, to over $213 billion in 2030—would simply not be enough to bridge the divide. (The bank’s revenue projections are based on an assumption of a higher proportion of paid subscribers in the medium term and an assumption that large language model, or LLM, providers will capture some of the digital advertising market.)
The bank notes several options to close the gap, including dramatically ramping up the proportion of paid subscribers (going from 10% to 20% could add $194 billion in revenue); capturing a larger share of digital ad spending; or extracting extraordinary efficiencies from compute operations. But even under bullish conversion and monetization scenarios, the company would still need fresh capital beyond 2030.
HSBC, like many other banks writing on the AI revolution, returned again to the famous quote by Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in productivity statistics,” noting drily that “poor productivity gains driven by weak total factor (labor and capital) productivity are an unfortunate characteristic of today’s developed economies.” In fact, the bank notes that some aren’t convinced of a meaningful return yet from the 30-year-old internet revolution itself, citing Federal Reserve president John Williams’s 2017 comment that “productivity provided by modern technologies like the internet has so far only influenced our consumption of leisure—and hasn’t yet trickled down to offices or factories.”
