Layer 7: Physical Infrastructure — The Agentic Economy

Layer 7: Physical Infrastructure is the foundation of the Agentic Economy — the atoms beneath the bits. Every AI agent, every model inference, every training run ultimately depends on physical hardware: chips, data centers, network cables, and power plants.

Silicon & Semiconductors

NVIDIA dominates AI compute with its GPU and CUDA ecosystem, but the landscape is broadening. AMD offers competitive Instinct accelerators. Broadcom designs custom AI chips for hyperscalers. Cerebras builds wafer-scale AI processors. Tenstorrent and SambaNova pursue alternative architectures. Google's TPU, Meta's MTIA, Tesla's D1/Dojo, and Apple Silicon represent the hyperscaler move to design custom AI chips.

The semiconductor supply chain itself is critical: TSMC manufactures the vast majority of cutting-edge AI chips. ASML builds the lithography machines TSMC depends on. Lam Research provides etch and deposition equipment. Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix produce the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that AI accelerators require.

Data Centers & Networking

Equinix operates the world's largest interconnection platform. Vertiv provides the cooling, power management, and thermal systems that keep AI data centers running. Arista Networks builds the high-bandwidth networking fabric connecting GPU clusters.

Energy

AI's energy demands are reshaping the power industry. Constellation Energy has restarted nuclear plants to serve AI data center demand. Oklo develops small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) purpose-built for the energy needs of AI infrastructure — the ultimate foundation layer.