The AI Land Rush: The Technology That Tore Up the Rulebook and Crushed Prices

If there’s ever been a technology that didn’t just bend the rules but tore them out by the roots, it’s artificial intelligence. Not the internet, not the steam engine, not even the lightbulb. AI has swept in like a tempest, ripping up old business models and slamming prices from orbit straight into the basement.

Take ChatGPT — the digital chatterbox that talks to you like an old mate over a pint. It reached 800 million users in just 17 months. No other technology in history has moved that fast.

The latest report delivers jaw-dropping numbers. The cost of using AI has dropped by 99 percent in two years. That’s not a typo. Nine-tenths cheaper. Training a new model still runs close to a billion dollars, but using it? Practically pocket change. And it’s not just OpenAI — Stanford's graphs show competitors flooding the market with open-source options, led with particular zeal by Chinese developers.

Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPU now uses 105,000 times less energy per token than the Kepler relic from 2014. Google, Amazon and the rest of the tech titans aren’t just riding the wave anymore — they’re building their own chips, with names like TPU and Trainium that sound like sci-fi weaponry, and arguably function like them too.

But there's always a flip side. The money flowing into AI gushes back out just as fast. Infrastructure, data centers, silicon, cooling — it all costs. The report is blunt: these aren’t side projects. They’re existential investments.

Still, one thing is certain. We, the ordinary users, are winning. Tools that once cost a fortune are now a few clicks away. Competition is brutal, prices are falling, and the pace of innovation is relentless. The only question left is who’s still standing when the dust finally settles.