Sam Altman’s declaration that “compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future” is the most profound economic statement of this decade. The $100 billion partnership with Nvidia announced this week is his down payment on that future, an attempt to build the engine for a new kind of capitalism driven by artificial intelligence.
In Altman’s vision, raw, intelligent compute becomes the primary factor of production, superseding traditional labor and capital in importance. The ability to generate novel ideas, solve complex problems, and automate cognitive work through AI becomes the main driver of economic value. The 10-gigawatt “AI factory” is designed to be the world’s most productive source of this new resource.
This new economy would see the emergence of industries we can barely imagine today. From automated scientific discovery as a service to AI-driven personalized healthcare and education, the applications built on top of this compute foundation could unlock trillions in economic value and dramatically increase human productivity and well-being.
However, this vision also presents immense challenges, particularly for labor markets. An economy based on compute could devalue many forms of human cognitive work, a topic of intense debate in nations like India with large, young workforces. The transition to this future will require a radical rethinking of education, social safety nets, and the very nature of work.
The Nvidia-OpenAI deal is the first major industrial project of this new economic era. It is a bold, tangible step toward creating the engine Altman envisions. Whether this engine leads to shared prosperity or greater inequality will be one of the defining questions for policymakers in the years to come.