AI Market Map 2026

AI Market Map 2026

A comprehensive market map for AI investors.

The AI Stack

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    APPLICATION LAYER                     │
│  (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Perplexity, Midjourney)    │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                   MODEL LAYER (APIs)                   │
│  (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral)            │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                 INFRASTRUCTURE LAYER                    │
│  (NVIDIA, AWS, GCP, Azure, CoreWeave, Together)        │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Detailed Market Sizing

Training Infrastructure ($50B TAM)

Segment Market Size Growth
GPU Servers $35B 40% YoY
Networking $10B 30% YoY
Storage $5B 25% YoY

Inference ($80B TAM)

Segment Market Size Growth
Cloud Inference $50B 60% YoY
Edge Inference $20B 100% YoY
On-prem $10B 30% YoY

AI Software ($120B TAM)

Segment Market Size Growth
Enterprise AI $60B 50% YoY
Consumer AI $30B 80% YoY
Developer Tools $30B 60% YoY

Infrastructure Layer

GPU Market

  • NVIDIA: ~95% market share in AI training
  • AMD: ~5% (MI300X gaining)
  • Intel: <2% (Gaudi)

Cloud AI

Provider AI Revenue Market Share
AWS ~$10B 40%
Azure ~$5B 25%
GCP ~$5B 25%
Others ~$2B 10%

Inference Companies

Company Specialty Throughput
Together AI Open models 100K tok/s
Fireworks Fast API 200K tok/s
Anyscale Ray Varies
Baseten Serverless 50K tok/s

Foundation Models

Model Comparison

Model Context Price Strengths
GPT-5 1M $15/1M Ecosystem, reasoning
Claude 4.6 1M $15/1M Safety, coding
Gemini 2 2M $1.25/1M Multimodal, speed
Mistral 3 128K $0.40/1M Open weights
Llama 4 1M Open Open source

Model Pricing Trends

  • 2024: $60/1M tokens (GPT-4)
  • 2025: $15/1M tokens (GPT-4o)
  • 2026: $1-2/1M tokens (commoditization)

Application Layer

Enterprise Applications

Category Leaders ARR Growth
Copilot Microsoft $5B+ 200%
Notion AI Notion $500M+ 150%
Salesforce Einstein Salesforce $2B+ 50%

Consumer Applications

App Users Revenue Growth
ChatGPT 200M+ $500M+ 100%
Claude 10M+ $100M+ 300%
Midjourney 20M+ $200M+ 100%

Key Investment Frameworks

For Infrastructure Investments

  1. Compute scarcity - Who has GPU access?
  2. Ecosystem lock-in - CUDA, Kubernetes, etc.
  3. Margins - Hardware vs software
  4. Technology trajectory - Custom silicon?

For Application Investments

  1. Workflow depth - How embedded in customer ops?
  2. Retention - Are users staying?
  3. Gross margin - 70%+ software threshold
  4. Defensibility - Data? Brand? Network effects?

For Model Investments

  1. Compute efficiency - Token per dollar
  2. Developer ecosystem - How many building on it?
  3. Safety - Evaluation methodology
  4. Business model - API vs enterprise

Risk Factors

Technical Risks

Risk Likelihood Impact
Model commoditization High High
GPU shortage Medium High
Compute cost burden High Medium

Business Risks

Risk Likelihood Impact
Customer concentration Medium High
Regulatory Medium Medium
Competition High High

Due Diligence Checklist

  • Revenue verification (Stripe/API)
  • Customer references (3+)
  • Technical architecture review
  • Competitive analysis
  • Founder background check
  • Financial model review
  • Legal/regulatory review

Resources

Last updated: February 2026 - Updated weekly