The Boring Businesses That Will Dominate the AI Era
They’re not the companies with the best models—they’re the ones that own what AI has to flow through.
TL;DR
- AI agents evaluate economic value and switch providers instantly, making infrastructure the new competitive edge.
- Five archetypes of AI infrastructure are emerging: knowledge compounders, workflow commons, reality's gatekeepers, marketplaces, and vertical transformations.
- Knowledge compounders leverage unique, continuously improving datasets generated through user interactions.
- Workflow commons provide shareable templates for AI agent coordination, capturing institutional knowledge.
- Reality's gatekeepers act as trusted toll booths in regulated areas, managing real-world consequences.
- Marketplaces facilitate high-speed trading floors for AI services, optimizing routing and execution.
- Vertical transformation involves building AI to handle entire industry workflows end-to-end at a lower cost.
- Each archetype compounds value through usage, offering a harder-to-copy advantage than AI models alone.
- Companies are building moats not on models or interfaces, but on infrastructure that takes the longest to rebuild.