In 2009, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp found themselves stranded on a rainy night in Paris, unable to hail a cab.

That’s when the idea struck: “What if you could press a button on your phone and a car pulled up to take you anywhere you wanted to go?”

Right idea, right time.

Over the next two years, all the infrastructure that would make that idea a reality was coming online.

The iPhone 3G launched in 2008, putting a GPS-enabled supercomputer in millions of pockets. That same year, the App Store debuted, giving developers a way to ship software to the masses. Mobile broadband was also improving.

In other words, all the “pipes” were being laid.

And Uber (UBER)? It became the app that ran through those pipes… and rewrote how the world moves.

• This is how disruption works.

First, the infrastructure gets built. Then the world is transformed by the businesses that ride on top of it.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Take the dot-com boom. Cisco Systems (CSCO)—the company that built the internet’s plumbing—briefly became the most valuable company on Earth. It was the Nvidia (NVDA) of the '90s.

But Cisco didn’t become the most important internet company. The real wealth was created by the apps that came later—by companies like Google (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), and Netflix (NFLX).

Each used cheap bandwidth to build billion-dollar businesses that rewired entire industries.

Here are the profits those stocks handed out over the next two decades:

Now, the pattern is repeating—but this time with artificial intelligence (AI).

• AI is becoming the “internet” of our time…

Over the next two to three years alone, big tech will pour over $1 trillion into AI data centers.
These are the modern factories where electricity goes in… and intelligence comes out.

But as disruption investors, it’s critical we look beyond the pipes.

Because just like the internet buildout enabled companies like Amazon and Google to flourish… the real wealth in AI will be created by businesses that use this infrastructure to deliver something entirely new.

• We call them AI-native companies.

These aren’t traditional businesses bolting AI onto their workflows. They’re startups and disruptors built from the ground up around AI—just like Uber was built around the iPhone, GPS, and the App Store.

They don’t work without AI. They exist because of AI.

This shift marks the beginning of Phase 2 of the AI boom—where the money starts moving “up the stack.” Away from infrastructure providers… and toward the companies building apps, platforms, and services on top of all that AI horsepower.

• It’s the same playbook we’ve seen again and again.

In the 2000s, broadband got fast and cheap—and apps like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify (SPOT) emerged to take advantage. Now, we’re watching the same pattern play out.

Here’s what’s fueling the shift:

• The cost to use AI—aka inference—is in freefall. A task that cost $60 per million tokens just a few years ago now costs about six cents. That’s a 1,000X drop.
• AI adoption is breaking records. Google’s Gemini serves over 500 million users per month. OpenAI became the fastest company in history to hit a $500 billion valuation.
• Revenue is showing up fast. Across the top 100 AI apps using Stripe, average annual revenue is already $5 million—a figure reached in just two years.

This kind of hypergrowth is unprecedented—and it’s unlocking new possibilities in every corner of the economy.

As Phase 2 gets underway, the next great fortunes will belong to the AI “apps” that turn intelligence into world-changing businesses.

• Want to know which of these “apps” are on our radar?

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Stephen McBride is Chief Analyst, RiskHedge. To get more ideas like this sent straight to your inbox every Monday and Friday, make sure to sign up for The Jolt, a free investment letter focused on profiting from disruption.