Layer 5
Business
Who does what, who pays, and where the money finally settles.
The same euro passes through several hands. An application company is paid by its customer and pays a model provider, which pays for cloud capacity, which spends on chips, electricity and buildings. The euro does not split evenly along the way, and where it stops is not where the work was hardest.
What happens in this layer
01
There are many ways to be paid
Selling hardware, renting capacity, billing compute by the hour, metered access to an interface, monthly subscriptions, enterprise licences, consulting, and pricing tied to a result.
02
Money collects wherever something is scarce
The largest share goes to whoever holds something hard to copy: the cheapest compute, unique data, access to customers, a deep hook into how the work is done, or a regulator's approval.
03
When a layer becomes a commodity, the margin leaves
As soon as a layer is easy to swap out, its prices fall and the money moves along to the next bottleneck.
04
The largest firms sit in several layers at once
One company can own the building, design the chips, sell the compute, train the models and ship the finished applications.
A common misconception
Key terms
Whole glossary →Articles on this topic
Is there an AI bubble
Four companies will invest 760 billion dollars this year. Meanwhile most companies get no measurable effect on their results. Both can be true.
The AI ecosystem: from electricity to the customer's benefit
The whole chain in one piece: where the electricity comes from, what happens in a data centre, how a model is trained, and where the money finally ends up.
Why the cost of AI catches people out
Training is a separate investment. Running it is paid for every single time.