Home Speakers Benedict Evans Quote But at one extreme, there are two or three giant minds that run half of everything and have massive pricing power, and at the other extreme LLMs look like databases - there’ll be millions of them, some very big and some very small, and the value is in what you build on top - after all, every SaaS company is a ’database wrapper’.
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More from Benedict Evans Essay AI, tools and transformation Sep 3, 2026
AI doesn’t change the question: it creates new choices and moves the thresholds. Essay AI, tools and transformation Sep 3, 2026
But with every previous platform shift, the stuff that actually mattered was the stuff that wasn't even possible before and that no-one even imagined. Essay AI, tools and transformation Sep 3, 2026
Instead of having to create those tools one at a time, software might be dynamic, generative, free-form, and spontaneous. Massively more tasks can be automated, with massively less software. Essay AI, tools and transformation Sep 3, 2026
None of this is solved by making easier to write code - by making it easier to make tools. The hard part is knowing that you need a tool for this in the first place, and then knowing what the tool should do. Essay AI, tools and transformation Sep 3, 2026
With every new technology, we start by using it for the work we already have, and we just do that more and faster. Essay Ways to think about token pricing Jul 9, 2026
Even so, that brings me back to the same point: the current market dynamics point to a future in which, as today’s supply crunch eases, frontier models move towards becoming commodity infrastructure, with all of the value built on top, and for a different outcome, something needs to happen that we don’t see yet. Essay Ways to think about token pricing Jul 9, 2026
Meanwhile, there is structural uncertainty at the early stages of every big new technology, but the uncertainty now is different, because we don’t have a good theoretical understanding of why these models work so well and so we don’t know how much better they can get. Essay Ways to think about token pricing Jul 9, 2026
The narrow problem with that is that fiber construction was far ahead of demand, where AI compute construction is far behind demand, though, as above, we don’t know what that supply/demand balance will look like in the future. Essay Ways to think about token pricing Jul 9, 2026
We knew the physical limits in ways we don’t really know with LLMs. Next month a new approach could cut inference compute needs by 90%, or double demand, or both. Essay Predicting AI job exposure May 24, 2026
We know, in principle, that like every other big wave of technology, AI is bound to destroy some jobs and create others.
On the same topics Blog The Most Important Market in AI is the Middle Sep 23, 2026
But the right tail of the market is thinner than almost anyone forecast. Blog The Most Important Market in AI is the Middle Sep 23, 2026
Demand for intelligence is not a pyramid with a small, wealthy peak paying for everything beneath it. Blog The Most Important Market in AI is the Middle Sep 23, 2026
Most business AI use is the messy middle: multi-step workflows that need a smart enough model at a price a company can afford. It is the most important part of the market today, & it is where the competition is fiercest. Blog Frontier Overhangs Sep 21, 2026
A world with sufficient compute is one where intelligence is a commodity, and in commodity markets margin comes from a superior cost structure, which I would expect the leading model providers to have, in part because they have a meaningful lead in scaling and can apply superior AI to their infrastructure. Blog Frontier Overhangs Sep 21, 2026
Pure capability no longer translates directly into a moat. Blog AI Comes for the If Statement Sep 21, 2026
If this is the first of many primitives specialized for production, then harnesses are about to capture a lot more margin. About this quote 
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