The Sequence Opinion - Issue 951: The Whole Stack Wins

Imagine asking an agent to reorganize your trip after a flight cancellation. It finds a replacement, checks your calendar, moves the hotel reservation, and obtains your approval before paying. The experience feels like one product. Economically, it is a small supply chain: an application, a model, live data, security controls, and compute. Who captures the value? The instinctive answer is to pick a layer. Infrastructure owns the scarce resources. Models own the intelligence. Applications own the customer. One of these must eventually eat the others. I think that framing is wrong. My thesis is that all these layers will work: each can support durable businesses because each solves a different problem. Not every company will survive, and not every valuation will make sense. But AI is more likely to create several interdependent profit pools than one victorious layer. Three theories, one missing variable Read more