Has Generative AI Begun to Slow Search Engine Usage?

With the caveat that data for all of 2024 and early 2025 has to be estimated, it might be the case that new ChatGPT activity (to look at just one of the generative artificial intelligence chatbots) has begun to affect search engine volume growth, which is what most observers likely expected. 

Forecast assumptions:

• Google: Assumes a one- to two- percent  annual growth rate, consistent with reported traffic stability and slight increases (1.4 percent from May 2023–2024).

• Bing: Reflects a slight uptick post-ChatGPT integration in 2023, stabilizing at four-percent market share.

• Yahoo & DuckDuckGo: Minimal growth, holding steady at two percent and one-percent market share, respectively.

• ChatGPT: Starts low (reflecting its early web traffic of 55 million visits by late 2023) and grows rapidly, aligning with claims of 5.25 times growth in AI search use by early 2025.

"AI Edge Computing" is Multiple Markets, Not One

AI edge computing refers to the deployment of artificial intelligence algorithms at the "edge" of a network, closer to where data is generated, rather than relying solely on centralized cloud infrastructure. 

But there is a huge difference between “on-device” and “at a remote site” implementations, value chains and markets. 

For example,, on-device edge AI is about smartphones, IoT sensors, wearables or autonomous vehicles. 

Remote edge AI is about data centers, cloud computing, servers and other “enterprise” or “business” computing functions. 

Lumping everything together in one big “AI edge computing” category obscures as much as it illuminates. 

Category	Metric	On-Device Edge AI	Remote Edge AI	Source/Assumption
Market Size (2025)	Financial (USD Billion)	$15 billion	$10 billion	Based on edge AI market growth (e.g., Grand View Research, 21.7% CAGR from $20.78B in 2024)
Market Size (2030)	Financial (USD Billion)	$50 billion	$35 billion	Extrapolated from "device" and "data center" forecasts
Usage (2025)	Devices/Deployments	20 billion devices (smartphones, wearables)	500,000 edge nodes (e.g., servers, gateways)	Statista IoT, IDC edge spending forecasts
Compute Cycles (2025)	Avg. Cycles per Task	10^6 cycles (lightweight models, e.g., NLP)	10^9 cycles (complex models, e.g., video analytics)	Hardware capability estimates
Financial Implication	Revenue Driver	Hardware sales (AI chips, $500 billion smartphone market)	Infrastructure and services , perhaps $450 billion per year	On-device chips, smartphones for "on-device" mkt., connectivity and servers for "remote"
Growth Rate (2025-2030)	CAGR	27%	23%	Higher consumer device adoption vs. enterprise

As you can see, “edge AI” markets are largely contained within other existing device and data center markets. Looking at chip content alone, in either edge device or data center markets is helpful, but doesn’t show the full value chain for either type of product.

How Big is the High Performance Computing Market?

The high-performance computing segment of the overall computing market is big, and apparently destined to get bigger as artificial intelligence takes hold, some forecasts suggest. The issue is “how big?” 

Estimates from leading research firms including IDC and Gartner are substantial--suggesting a 2023 market of between $530 billion and $795 billion (though presumably there is some overlap or overcounting within each category, from firm to firm).

Segment	2023 Market Value (USD Billion)	Cumulative Annual Growth Rate 2023-2030
Chip/GPU Sales	$150 - $200	15-20%
Server & Storage	$100 - $150	12-18%
Networking & Interconnect	$50 - $80	10-15%
Software & Services*	$75 - $125	20-25%
Data Center Infrastructure	$125 - $175	10-15%
"GPU as a Service"	$20 - $40	30-40%
"AI as a Service"	$10 - $25	40-50%
* HPC Software, $30 - $50B, 25-30% growth rate HPC Consulting & Support, $25-$45B, 18-22% growth rate AI Software, $20-$30B, 25-35% growth rate

As always, the assumptions are crucial. It often is hard to separate investments or revenue from “high-performance computing” within the larger computing or cloud computing market. And the estimates might be on the optimistic side, as typically is the case. 

Estimates from other firms are lower. Analysts at Grandview Research, for example, only estimate a 2030 HPC market value of less than $90 billion. 

Segment	2023 Value (USD)	2030 Value (USD)	CAGR
Overall Market	52.65 billion	87.31 billion	7.5%
Data Center GPU Market	14.87 billion	76.76 billion	28.5%
GPU as a Service (GPUaaS)	3.35 billion	16.74 billion	21.6%
High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)	767.1 million	4.90 billion	25.5%
Commercial High-Performance Computing	25.33 billion	42.48 billion	9.0%
High-Performance Computing for Automotive	1.24 billion	2.32 billion	9.4%

Still, assuming the truth lies someplace between the “extremes,” we might still reasonably conclude that the high-performance computing market will reach somewhere in the neighborhood of $325 billion to $420 billion by about 2030.  

Market Segment	2023 Estimated Value (USD)	2030 Projected Value (USD)	Growth Rate
GPU/Chip Sales	$30-35 billion	$120-150 billion	~20-25% CAGR
Data Center HPC Infrastructure	$25-30 billion	$80-100 billion	~18-22% CAGR
AI/HPC Cloud Services	$15-20 billion	$60-80 billion	~22-27% CAGR
AI Hardware Accelerators	$10-15 billion	$40-55 billion	~19-24% CAGR
HPC Software & Services	$8-12 billion	$25-35 billion	~16-20% CAGR
Total Market	$88-112 billion	$325-420 billion	~20-25% CAGR

Wipro Survey Suggests Business Leaders are Moving to Cloud-Based AI Operations

A Wipro report on cloud computing finds enterprise leaders are moving towards cloud-based platforms for artificial intelligence use cases. That probably makes sense to many as projects move from pilot stage to full implementation, which requires scaling the compute infrastructure. 

source: Wipro

While not absolutely confirming the magnitude of hyperscale cloud computing leader investments in AI infrastructure, the survey of some 500 U.S. and European business leaders tends to confirm the need for additional infrastructure investment to support AI operations. 

Microsoft, for example, has announced it will spend about $80 billion on AI infrastructure in its 2025 fiscal year (ending in June 2025) after spending about $53 billion on data center infrastructure in 2023 and 2024. 

It has been estimated that Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple alone invested up to $210 billion in infrastructure (including AI infra) in 2024 alone. 

Company	2024 AI Infrastructure Investment
Microsoft	$50 billion
Meta	$30-37 billion
Amazon	$75 billion
Alphabet	$38.3 billion
Apple	$10.8 billion

 S&P Global Ratings expects market annual spending for artificial intelligence, including traditional AI (machine learning) and generative AI, will expand to nearly $650 billion by 2028 from less than $200 billion in 2023, a compound average growth rate in the high-20 percent area. 

The agency projects the AI market will account for nearly 15 percent of total global IT spending by 2028, including semiconductors, hardware, software, and IT services.

 

source: S&P Global