Quick take:
- Global investment banking company Goldman Sachs predicts the metaverse could be an $8 trillion opportunity.
- This comes after Morgan Stanley also issued the exact prediction last November.
- Several analysts also estimate the new immersive world could be worth trillions of dollars.
Leading global investment bank Goldman Sachs has predicted that the metaverse could be an $8 trillion opportunity. In a recent “Exchanges at Goldman Sachs” episode titled, ‘Understanding the Metaverse and Web 3.0’, analyst Eric Sheridan said “the metaverse could be an $8 trillion opportunity,” answering a question about the evolution of the industry and how big the opportunity could be.
Last November, fellow investment banking institution Morgan Stanley also predicted the metaverse could be worth $8 trillion.
Describing the potential evolution of the metaverse, Sheridan said that the metaverse could grow alongside and within the digital economy.
“We look at the digital economy today, which is roughly about 20%, 25% of the global economy— we see the digital economy continuing to grow, and on top of that we see a virtual economy that will grow within and alongside this digital economy.”
Based on the predicted growth verticals, the bank estimates derived various outcomes ranging from $2 trillion to $12 trillion, “with $8 trillion at the midpoint of all potential outcomes,” he elaborated.
Goldman and Morgan Stanley are not the only firms issuing gigantic estimates of the metaverse opportunity. The Bank of America’s strategist, Haim Israel said in December that the virtual world is a huge opportunity where crypto will be widely adopted as currencies, while the CEO of Ark Investment Management, Cathie Wood, sees it as a multitrillion-dollar market.
In another bombastic prediction crypto-asset investment company Grayscale Investments said the metaverse is potentially a $1 trillion opportunity.
And whilst many of these investment management companies are actively predicting how much the industry could be worth, technology giants are taking a more direct approach, with Microsoft recently coughing $69 billion to buy Activision Blizzard, in a deal dubbed the biggest metaverse gamble yet.
Others like Nvidia have focused on developing an ecosystem that will help developers build the metaverse economy, while Meta, Facebook’s parent, revealed its powerful AI supercomputer will be the fastest in the world when completed, helping AI models evolve to the next frontier.
Some of the moves the giant tech companies are making suggest the analysts may be on to something with their predictions, also backed by the level of investment made towards the metaverse by venture capital firms.
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