Through early March this year, 36 percent of U.S. technology jobs posted were seeking employees with AI skills. Since the rollout of ChatGPT, in the fourth quarter 2022, through the end of last year, new AI-related job postings increased 68 percent, while technology job postings were down 27 percent over the same period. Meanwhile, U.S. start-ups, led by generative AI companies, are now raising more cash than at any point since 2021, increasing to about $80 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024. Generative AI accounted for $33.9 billion globally in private investment last year, up 18.7 percent from the prior year. Even more money is expected to be invested by Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, which combined are planning to spend $320 billion this year, with a primary focus on boosting their AI products. That spending represents a 44 percent increase from last year for those same four companies.
Technology jobs, venture capital investments and tech company capital spending are just three of the areas that are relying on the growth and adoption of generative AI, with semiconductors, the electrical grid, the stock market and even the economy also connected to potential AI growth. Yet the questions and issues we raised last year about the speed of adoption and revenue generation are still pertinent, and likely more relevant now with the rise of China’s DeepSeek and other AI reasoning models.