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Editor’s note: “The Agentic AI Tax: Who Pays and Who Profits” was previously published in May 2026 with the title, “Why the Smartest AI Investors Are Ignoring the Model Race.” It has since been updated to include the most relevant information available.
The dot-com era taught investors a valuable lesson.
Betting on the winning website was hard. Owning the infrastructure every website needed was easier.
Amazon (AMZN) survived. Pets.com disappeared. AOL rose, then faded. Dozens of internet companies burned through hundreds of millions of dollars and left investors with nothing. But Cisco (CSCO) made money through it all because every byte of internet traffic needed its routers and switches to move across the web.
