AI's dual exponential growth outpaces internet's flat-fee economics

The structural economics of AI differ from web platforms because revenue scales on two independent vectors—raw user adoption and increased token consumption per user—rather than the internet's single dimension of subscriber count at fixed prices. AI labs can sustain margin expansion even as per-user pricing compresses, a dynamic that distinguishes unit economics from the commoditization pressures that have plagued digital advertising and SaaS. For commerce specifically, AI-powered tools can remain structurally profitable at scale if token usage grows as new use cases emerge, rather than following the margin destruction pattern of prior software waves.