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Casado: AI compute demand will persist for decades like electricity

Martin Casado · Why Top Founders Are Racing Into AI Infrastructure · Aug 28, 2026 · at 20:05

a16z General Partner Martin Casado compares the AI buildout to historic general-purpose technologies, predicting decades of ongoing compute demand.

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“The right analog here is like the steam engine or electricity. In the following way, like, we've introduced this new thing that you can turn to work, and there's some very obvious applications now, but there's probably 3040 years of throwing computer problems... So let's expect, you know, this compute need to persist for decades.”

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