The trillion-dollar companies of the next decade
Most AI analysis asks which model wins. This publication asks the question after that: when intelligence gets cheap, where does the value go?
When Intelligence Is Free maps the post-AI economy as four routes value takes once cognition stops being the expensive part.
Substitute: what AI can reproduce. Value leaves; prices fall toward the cost of compute. Amplify: what AI consumes more of. Demand rises; the bottleneck earns the rent. Reprice: what AI cannot create. Scarcity re-rates; surplus flows to the fixed. Unlock: what AI makes viable. Categories appear that were uneconomic until thinking got cheap.
Three things publish here. Essays build the map one territory at a time, with named companies, real figures and the conditions that would prove the argument wrong. A short note at every monthly close records what moved, what it cost or paid, and what changed in the reasoning. A full review each quarter records which scenarios became more or less likely, and why.
None of it is theory held at a safe distance. The same map runs as a concentrated strategy, marked against the Nasdaq-100 every month with the positions named and the attribution published: see the book. When the map is wrong, the numbers say so before I do.
I write this as an investor rather than a commentator: my own capital sits behind this framework. The judgment comes from twenty years on every side of the table. A decade as a consulting Partner delivering Fortune 500 technology transformation; product leadership through DEGIRO’s scale-up and acquisition into Europe’s largest listed online broker; Partner in a €100M fintech venture group; and a startup I founded and funded.
Transform, build, scale, exit, and now allocate.
I also advise selectively on where AI changes enterprise value, operating leverage, defensibility and market structure. If that is the question on your desk, my inbox is open: vlad@whenintelligenceisfree.com
