The AI Economy 🔍

Spending on AI infrastructure has become the largest non-war expenditure in human history. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta plan to allocate a total of $725 billion to capital expenditures in 2026. This figure represents a 77% jump from last year's record of $410 billion. Moreover, there is no sign of slowing down; on the contrary, the figures are being revised upwards every quarter.

OpenAI anticipates spending between $100 and $125 billion, while Anthropic projects approximately $50 billion. China also anticipates an investment of $100 to $200 billion. When you add the additional $100 to $200 billion needed for energy, grid, cooling, gas turbines, substations, and land use, the total expenditure for 2026 alone is estimated to be between $900 billion and $1.3 trillion.

A historical perspective is essential to understand these figures. Adjusted for inflation, the total cost of the Apollo space program was approximately $200 billion. This means that today's spending on artificial intelligence is at least four times larger than the project that sent humanity to the moon. At its peak, the Apollo program accounted for 4.4% of US federal spending. Today, AI capital expenditures represent 15 to 20% of US government spending.

Another striking comparison concerns the war economy. The total global spending on World War II is estimated at between $4 and $7 trillion in today's dollars. At the current rate, AI spending will reach this figure within a few years. For the US alone, the highest annual spending during World War II was approximately $1 trillion in today's dollars. US AI spending this year is quite close to that level. While the percentage of GDP is still smaller, the absolute magnitude is closing the gap.

The picture becomes clearer when compared to infrastructure projects. These expenditures are roughly twice the total cost of the US interstate highway system over 35 years. This is slightly less than the UK government's total budget, roughly twice the size of Germany's federal budget, and about 1.5 times Japan's budget, and larger than the GDP of all countries except the US.

In the history of private capital, there has never been anything like this. Even the Industrial Revolution did not witness such a concentrated flow of capital on this scale and at this speed. And the ultimate goal of all these expenditures is extremely ambitious: to replace human thought.

So how can cryptocurrencies find a place for themselves in this massive transformation? The answer lies precisely in the nature of these expenditures. As artificial intelligence infrastructure becomes more centralized, the need for decentralized mechanisms to balance these systems also increases. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are poised to play a critical role in many areas, from micro-payments and data verification among the trillions of autonomous agents that AI will create, to decentralized computing power sharing and the identification of AI-generated content.

This is the largest non-military expenditure in human history. And this time, the battlefield is not physical, but cognitive. What will determine the winner is not just the money spent, but how wisely that money is directed.

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