54,466 page views this month37,346 readers this month
GoCardless
JM
Analyst Index · Artificial Intelligence

Jim McGregor

Founder and Principal Analyst, Tirias Research
41%
Accuracy
37 of 41
Analyst ranking
3
Predictions scored
5
Still to fall due
1 mostly right2 wrong
Scored predictions2
Mostly right · 75%Tirias Research believes that the limited forms of GenAI in use today, such as text-to-text, text-to-speech and text-to-image, will rapidly advance to video, games, and even metaverse generation starting within the next 18 to 24 monthsArtificial Intelligence · made Jul 2023 · due Jul 2025

What happened. Video generation arrived inside the window: OpenAI released Sora publicly in December 2024 and Google launched Veo 3 with audio at I/O in May 2025. Game/world generation appeared only as research (Google DeepMind's Genie 2, December 2024); nothing like metaverse generation shipped. The core of the call, generative AI moving to video within 18-24 months, came true with public products from OpenAI and Google. Games came only as research demos and metaverse generation did not happen, so it is not fully right. Sources: openai.com, blog.google, deepmind.google.

Source: GenAI Breaks The Data Center Part II: Moving GenAI To The Edge Through On-Device Computing (Forbes) · 24 months from date made

Trend call · long-range · counts 0.75Medium confidence
Wrong · 0%When Tirias Research first forecasted global generative AI demand in 2023, we predicted token output would reach an aggressive 20 trillion tokens ... by the end of 2024.Artificial Intelligence · made May 2023 · due Dec 2024

What happened. By Tirias's own account in the same June 2025 column, 'actual usage surged to a staggering 667 trillion tokens' in 2024 (the article also gives 677 trillion later on); a July 2026 Tirias white paper restated 2024 at 990 trillion. The forecast was about 33 times too low. Forecast of 20 trillion tokens against a first published actual of 667 trillion is a miss of over 95%, far outside the 25% band. McGregor himself says the estimate was 'soon overwhelmed'. Sources: forbes.com, forbes.com.

Source: The Unstoppable Growth Of Generative AI (AI Outlook Part 1) (Forbes, 20 Jun 2025)

Caveat. No independent evidence available. Scored on Tirias Research’s own figures.

Specific · counts 1Forecast 20 trillion text tokens (annual generative AI output, 2024) · actual 667 trillion text tokens (annual generative AI output, 2024)High confidence
Still to fall due3 predictions
  1. Dec 2030the annual rate of token generation is expected to skyrocket from 677 trillion in 2024 to 2,092 trillion by the end of 2025 and 77,000 trillion (77 quadrillion) by the end of 2030.Artificial Intelligence · made Jun 2025 · source
  2. Dec 2025the annual rate of token generation is expected to skyrocket from 677 trillion in 2024 to 2,092 trillion by the end of 2025 and 77,000 trillion (77 quadrillion) by the end of 2030.Artificial Intelligence · made Jun 2025 · source
  3. Dec 2028By the end of 2028, the forecast estimates over 6 billion users or about 90% of smartphone market penetration and over 1 quadrillion annual tokens or a 100X increase.Artificial Intelligence · made May 2023 · source
Jim McGregor’s right of replyAnalysts can answer any verdict on their profile in up to 250 characters, once VETTDD has verified them. Replies appear after we approve them.