The 1996 Internet Trade Was the Layer Trade
Imagine knowing in 1996 that the internet was real, but not knowing which companies would become the winners. Google did not exist. Amazon was a bookstore. The obvious names were not yet obvious.
The trade was in the layers every winner would need: fiber, routers, hosting, and the infrastructure that moved data. Those suppliers could benefit regardless of which application eventually captured the consumer.
That is a useful framework for AI investing. Instead of only asking which model or application wins, map the bottlenecks that every winner must pass through. Compute, power, networking, memory, and the physical infrastructure behind them can be more durable exposures than a single end-market champion.
The lesson is not that applications do not matter. It is that the picks-and-shovels layer can compound while the market is still arguing over the final winner.
