The fastest growing companies in AI & software all share one property. They are either selling AI directly, or they are reselling inference. At worst, the first derivative of inference.
State-of-the-art AI email costs $22-130/month, but smaller models & local inference can cut costs by 100x. The next 12-24 months will be defined by matching models to workloads.
Email volumes will explode. The inbox will disappear. Email will persist as an API.
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About half of agent tasks can run on a local 35B model. The real advantage isn't cost or privacy — it's latency. 2.1x faster means more iteration cycles per session.
Anthropic trades at 17x EV/NTM on 165% growth, a 65% discount to Palantir. Capital intensity, profitability uncertainty & growth volatility explain the gap.
As engineering teams shrink and AI agents multiply, key-person risk becomes existential. The ratio you choose determines your team's shape and its fragility.
Ad-supported AI is viable. A 4x B200 cluster breaks even with one search ad every 40 minutes or one content ad every 3 minutes. For heavier workloads, $10/month plus 8 ads per day covers a side project.
The $100B AI inference market is fragmenting into specialized workload types, just as databases evolved from one category into dozens. Here's the map.
The new sales motion asks three questions : software budget, labor budget, & what ratio you want in three years.
