The Internet’s Pride Is Being Dismantled Bit by Bit by AI

AI is rewriting internet economics

The defining asset of the internet — lightness — is under pressure. It has been reported that Amazon (亚马逊) alone may spend as much as $200 billion on AI-related capital expenditure in 2026, and that four leading internet companies’ annual AI bills are approaching the size of the global semiconductor industry’s yearly revenue (about $800 billion in 2025). The old magic — write code once, serve millions at near-zero marginal cost — is giving way to a model where compute, power and water determine who wins.

Chinese giants pivot to heavy infrastructure

Chinese platforms are following suit. ByteDance (字节跳动) reportedly plans RMB 160 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, with roughly half targeted at AI chips and data centers; Alibaba (阿里) has been reported to consider raising a three‑year AI and cloud investment plan from RMB 380 billion to RMB 480 billion; Tencent (腾讯) reportedly spent nearly RMB 80 billion in 2025 with AI accounting for more than half of its capex. Volcano Engine (火山引擎), ByteDance’s cloud unit, has publicly argued that token pricing must reflect model value — a tacit acknowledgment that cheap access is no longer sustainable.

Cost, scale and geopolitical pressures

Why the rush? Training is expensive, but inference is perpetual. It has been reported that daily token consumption on large models climbed from some 120 billion tokens to about 120 trillion tokens in two years — a thousandfold jump — and that a 250 MW data center can cost roughly $12 billion to bring online. JPMorgan reportedly estimates AI data‑center construction could require $5–7 trillion over the next five years. Add export controls and chip sanctions into the mix and governments and firms are forced to localize supply chains and build capacity rather than rent it, further raising the barrier to entry.

What this means for startups and users

So do small teams lose? Not entirely. Lightweight application development is alive — one‑person shops now use API access to ship products that once needed dozens of engineers. But the balance of power is shifting. The infrastructure moat is widening: whoever owns the chips, racks and kilowatts sets prices and rules of access. For Western readers: this is as much an industrial contest as it is a product one, and trade policy and sanctions will shape who can afford to play at scale. What was once the internet’s pride — extreme leverage of code over capital — is being redefined by the physics of electricity and cooling.