The AI stack has a middle
🏪 The AI stack has a middle, and it’s the least discussed layer in it.
The landlords get the coverage: the megawatts, the buildings, the GPUs. Deservedly → they’re the buildout. But that business is capital-hungry by design, and every dollar of growth has a construction bill attached.
The middle runs on different economics. 🏗️ $DOCN 🌐 $NET 📦 $AKAM buy compute wholesale, wrap it in developer tools, and sell finished AI by the token. Asset-light. Margin scales with usage, not with construction.
Here’s the structural point: 100,000 builders are about to ship AI products, and most will never rent a rack directly. They’ll buy from the middle. Landlords get paid for the building. Merchants get paid every time a token moves. 🪙
The ledger: merchants carry platform risk, and the hyperscalers can squeeze from above. That fight is real and worth watching.
But in every gold rush, the picks sell once. The tolls collect forever.
DYOR.