Intelligence dashboards: $100 billion, open to anyone.
Intelligence dashboards are a $15 billion business today, the forecasters say $60 billion by 2030, I say $100 billion.
Governments pay the most: the US Army signed Palantir for $10 billion over 10 years, Mastercard bought Recorded Future for $2.65 billion.
Professionals pay $31,980 a year for a Bloomberg Terminal, 355,000 of them, and Perplexity now sells a rival for $200 a month.
The public pays nothing: WorldMonitor reached 4 million users in 2 months with zero marketing, I called free-to-paid in March 2026, Pro launched in August.
Intelligence dashboards come in 3 tiers, and the walls between them are falling.
Tier 1, governments: Palantir, the American company that sells Gotham to the US Army, the Pentagon, the CIA, and NATO allies like the UK and Germany. A $10 billion, 10-year Army contract. Not for you and me. Recorded Future sells threat intelligence to banks and corporates worldwide, which is why Mastercard paid $2.65 billion for it.
Tier 2, professionals: the Bloomberg Terminal, the New York data screen on every trading floor from Wall Street to Hong Kong. 355,000 traders and analysts pay $31,980 a year for market data, news, and the chat bond traders close deals on. In February 2026 Perplexity, the American AI search engine, put a $200-a-month terminal against it. My March call: Perplexity moves into open-source intelligence next, by late 2027.
Tier 3, the public: WorldMonitor, a free "CIA dashboard" built in a weekend: military aircraft, ships, satellite fires, internet outages, markets, betting odds, 100+ live feeds on 1 screen, no editor, no spin. 4 million people showed up uninvited, zero marketing. I called free-to-paid in March; Pro went live in August. The full story is in my blog.
My call: open-source intelligence becomes a $100 billion market by 2030, above the $60 billion consensus, because the customer base flips from 355,000 terminal seats to 100 million people watching the world in real time. The winners own live data feeds a chatbot cannot fake. Predictions are not always reality: the free tab must find paying users before Perplexity swallows it.
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