AI agents’ projected growth—and the cost of running them
Satya Nadella is quoted predicting an agent market “orders of magnitude” bigger than cloud, while a post citing Goldman Sachs forecasts 24-fold growth in agent token use by 2030.
TLDR
A post quotes Satya Nadella from the Sources Podcast and Alex Heath YouTube channel predicting an agent era “orders of magnitude” bigger than cloud. The cost counterpoint: a related post says agents’ planning, tool calls and corrections can make one request consume 10, 50 or more times as many tokens as a normal answer. It attributes to Goldman Sachs a forecast of 24-fold growth in agent token use by 2030. The post describes Goldman’s bullish case as monthly token use potentially reaching 120 quadrillion by 2030, while inference costs per token continue falling 60%–70% a year.
