Ben Thompson argues from Nvidia GTC 2026 that the AI cycle is being driven by real agent demand rather than speculative froth — and the implications for incumbents are different than the bubble case.
Stratechery / Ben Thompson· 19 min read· 2026Save this - and 500 more like it - to your library.
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Get Linkwise — free on iPhoneGini coefficient for Silicon Valley went from 30 to 83 since the '90s. Those are the conditions for the French Revolution.
The industry that ran on 'don't be evil' now has wealth concentration worse than pre-revolutionary France. The surprise is the politics stayed polite this long.
Packy McCormick on differentiation as a moral obligation — why the only viable strategy in a world of infinite content is to be unmistakably, almost unreasonably yourself.
Inflection-driven bubbles have fewer harmful side effects and more beneficial long-term effects.
Bubbles that bet on orders-of-magnitude change leave infrastructure behind. The real question isn't if AI's bubble bursts but what it leaves behind.