$74.5B by 2030: Why Retrieval-Augmented Generation Is AI’s Next $10B Opportunity | by R. Thompson (PhD) | Jun, 2025

“When the facts aren’t in your head, send your mind to the library. RAG just automated that.” — Anonymous AI Researcher

Picture this. It’s late. You’re elbows-deep in deployment logs, screens glowing in the dark. ChatGPT gives you an answer. It’s convincing. It’s also outdated. You dig through internal docs — 847 of them. Still no luck. You’re spiraling.

Now imagine an AI that knows your stack. Not just theoretically. It understands your exact build, the quirks of your system, the naming conventions you follow. It doesn’t guess — it retrieves. It generates, yes. But not alone.

That’s RAG in action. Retrieval-Augmented Generation.

From $1.3B in 2024 to a projected $74.5B by 2030, RAG isn’t a trend — it’s the connective tissue of next-gen AI systems. It’s no longer about simply generating text. It’s about being right. Being timely. Being grounded.

And that shift is changing everything.