I recently saw a weekly report from a16z, and there was a perspective that really hit home—technology is not only consuming the world, but more importantly, it is breaking all our existing models of the economy.

Let me start with a data point that will shock you. The combined market value of the top ten publicly traded companies worldwide has already surpassed the total GDP of all countries outside the G7 except the United States. If you exclude Saudi Aramco (although that company is quite tech-oriented too), the conclusion remains the same. This is not some vague concept; it is a tangible economic reality.

And this shift is happening incredibly fast. In 2016, the market value of the top ten tech companies was just a fraction of the GDP of other G7 countries; in less than ten years, they have turned that around. The market cap of the ten largest companies in the S&P 500 is now six times what it was in 2015, and their share of the index has doubled. If an investor back then tried to predict the growth potential of tech stocks based on 2015 models, they would have underestimated by about six times.

Even more astonishing is that technology’s contribution to overall market profit growth has exceeded 60%. a16z’s analysis points out that, aside from the brief boom in the energy sector in the early 21st century, no other industry has played such a central role in profit growth. Honestly, technology is no longer just a cycle; it is the cycle itself.

But the background of this story is even more interesting. Looking at history, we know that railroads once dominated the market during the industrial era, accounting for 63% of the total market value in the United States at their peak. Pessimists like to cite this as a bubble, but what actually happened was that railroads gave rise to a whole new economic system, one far larger than the railroads themselves. Railroads didn’t disappear; they were absorbed by something bigger.

This brings us to AI. One of the greatest contributions of railroads was that they fostered the development of modern organizational structures. Before railroads, companies were small enough to fit in a person’s mind. But with countless train sets, stations, and simultaneous decisions, by 1855, the New York and Erie Railroad Company drew the first modern organizational chart. Middle management, multi-divisional structures, professional managers—all these originated from the organizational challenges created by railroads.

Now, AI might be rewriting this script. Jack Dorsey recently proposed an idea: the value of AI in companies isn’t about giving everyone a copilot, but about replacing middle management functions. Absorbing information, maintaining alignment, pre-calculating decisions—these tasks, usually handled by management, could be delegated to technology in the future, allowing people to return to the front lines to handle customers and interpersonal interactions. If this idea holds, it means the 170-year-old model of corporate management is being reshaped by technology.

Beyond macroeconomics, I’ve also noticed a quiet shift in the use cases of stablecoins. Removing mechanical operations like trading and fund management, last year’s real payment transactions with stablecoins are estimated to be between $350 billion and $550 billion. B2B accounts for the majority, which is not surprising, but B2C and C2B are also growing, indicating that stablecoins are increasingly participating in everyday commercial activities.

There’s also a deeper social change worth paying attention to. Trust in traditional media among Americans has fallen to a historic low—only 28% say they have a lot or quite a lot of trust, down from 72% in 1975. But the real story is in the generational divide—76% of adults under 30 get news at least occasionally from social media, while only 28% of those over 65 do.

Interestingly, the 72% trust peak in 1975 is often regarded as the golden age of journalism, but in reality, only a few TV networks and newspapers monopolized information at that time. So, a question arises: how much of that “peak” trust was due to high-quality journalism, and how much was simply because there were no other options? The youngest generation, with the lowest trust in traditional media, grew up in the environment with the most choices. This aligns with what Martin Gurri discusses in “The Revolt of the Public”—the breakdown of information monopolies exposes authority that was never truly earned.

Overall, this a16z weekly report reflects not just market data, but a larger economic and social transformation underway. Technology is not just getting bigger; it is rewriting the rules of the game.