new Goldman Sachs Research suggests that artificial intelligence will reshape the financial landscape at major technology companies.
A a report The Wall Street banking giant argued last week that the adoption of autonomous AI agents is expected to lead to a 24-fold increase in global token consumption by 2030, reaching 120 quadrillion tokens processed per month.
With computing costs falling in tandem, AI companies are bracing for a period of “margin inflection,” said Jim Schneider, a senior equity analyst covering U.S. semiconductor and IT services. Goldman Sachs Research.
“The concern in the public investor community is sustainability capex “Because the free cash flows of the super-expanders have been compressed,” Schneider said. “What solves that? The answer lies in the fundamental economics of the problem. If you raise gross margins, you increase operating cash flow, and that gives you more room to spend.”
Despite the optimistic long-term outlook, the industry faces bottlenecks. For example, shortages of cutting-edge semiconductors are expected to continue for the next 12 to 18 months, as semiconductor makers build new factories to meet changing demand. Schneider expects it could take a couple of years for the offering to fully catch up with rapidly evolving use cases.
The researcher found that adoption will vary. Consumer-facing “smartphone takeover” agents are already emerging in markets such as China.
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“These things are becoming more autonomous in nature. We are entering a phase of “Always on” “Background agents handle tasks when they are needed,” Schneider said.
but Institution accreditation It is expected to take longer due to complex requirements around integration, testing and compliance.
“The important point is that adoption rates are still relatively low today, especially in small and medium-sized companies,” Schneider said.
“In 2030, we expect that 12% of knowledge workers will use agentic AI, but by 2040 that number will be 37%. You have this very long-term adoption.”
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has chronicled the lengthy events The path to institutional accreditation Of artificial intelligence agent.
Last August, chief product officers (CPOs) at more than half of the companies (52%) surveyed by PYMNTS said they were just “thinking about” or “exploring” agentic AI. Within a few months, this number dropped to 30%.
“In other words, A A large portion of the enterprise market “I’m out of window shopping,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.
“What has replaced the negative attention is practical implementation. In November, nearly 1 in 4 senior executives reported that they were either trialling agent AI or fully using it in production operations, up from just 3% in August.”
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