Steve Brotman in WSJ Pro Venture Capital on the $5 trillion to $10 trillion vibe coding market

In this week's WSJ Pro Venture Capital newsletter, reporter Yuliya Chernova rounded up reader responses to the question the Journal posed last week: How large is the addressable market for vibe-coding startups? Alpha Partners Managing Partner Steve Brotman led the responses with a case that vibe coding already accounts for roughly half of the value AI has created.

His starting point is token consumption. Vibe coding, also known as AI-software coding, consumes about half of all LLM tokens by Brotman's estimate, which means roughly half of the AI revenue and total addressable market created so far comes from developers using models to write software.

The forward math runs much larger. Brotman expects the AI supercycle to account for 10% to 20% of global GDP over the next 20 years, and if current consumption holds, vibe coding's share works out to $5 trillion to $10 trillion. "That's about as big as the entire transportation sector or the finance sector," Brotman writes.

At Alpha Partners, this is the opportunity set our strategy is built around. We provide the capital that lets our network of more than 1,000 early-stage VC partners exercise pro rata rights in their strongest companies, and vibe coding platforms are one category where we see that dynamic playing out.

A market the size of transportation or finance will not stay overlooked, and the investors who size it correctly today will own more of the companies that define it.

Read the full newsletter here.