
Every era has its utility barons. The 19th and 20th centuries gave us:
• Rockefeller — oil
• Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan — rail
• Edison and Westinghouse — electricity
Each of them built the substrate that everything else ran on. Each of them was priced, at the time, like they were crazy. In hindsight, they were underpriced.
The founders of today's frontier model labs are new age utility barons. Compute tokens are going to be as fundamental as electricity of this century — the metered unit that the next wave of productivity, science, and software will be billed against.
But there's one structural difference that I think is still underappreciated:
The titans of the past were regional. Standard Oil dominated American refining. The New York Central was a U.S. rail network. Westinghouse electrified American cities first, then exported.
Frontier model labs are global from day one. The same model serves developers in US, Europe, APAC etc.
That changes the potential of these businesses. They are poised for 10x to 100x growth over next 10-20 years.
Price them and position yourself accordingly.
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