AI Boom Could Send Apple, Meta Revenues Soaring

Gene Munster, an analyst at Deepwater Asset Management, says personalized artificial intelligence could become a major new source of revenue for Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Meta Platforms Inc. (META).

In his latest note, Munster estimates that between 75 million and 100 million people currently pay for AI subscriptions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok.

This represents a small fraction of the roughly 5.5 billion daily internet users globally, leaving an 'underappreciated AI growth lever' for model providers and consumer technology platforms.

Munster expects AI usage to increase as agents become more capable, eventually pushing users into higher-priced plans as they encounter usage and token limits.

For Apple, Munster's conservative scenario assumes 20% of its estimated 1.67 billion customers pay $10 a month for additional AI features or tokens, generating about $40 billion in annual revenue and roughly $32 billion in additional operating income, an estimated 18% increase in operating income.

His aggressive case assumes 50% of Apple customers pay $20 a month, potentially generating about $200 billion in annual revenue and increasing operating income by roughly 90%.