Why 2025’s Tech Shift Dwarfs the Internet’s Dawn

May 28, 2025 – The tech world loves a revolution. We’ve seen them before. But the current surge in Artificial Intelligence, as detailed in BOND Capital’s May 2025 “Trends – Artificial Intelligence” report, isn’t just another wave. It’s a velocity event, an acceleration so profound it’s making even the meteoric rise of the internet look like a leisurely stroll – a trend captured well in discussions about the accelerating AI revolution. Skeptics cry “bubble!” – a sentiment not unlike wondering is AI another Tulip Mania bubble? – and their caution is noted. But the data suggests that while parallels exist, the sheer pace and immediate global scalability of AI set this moment apart, demanding a recalibration of our playbooks.

If Internet Years Were Dog Years, AI Years Are Mayfly Generations

Vint Cerf, a “Founder of the Internet,” famously quipped in 1999 that an internet year felt like seven human years. BOND’s report (Page 3) reminds us of this context, then implicitly asks: what unit measures AI’s breakneck pace?

Consider this: ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, blitzed to 100 million users in a mere 0.2 years (Page 58). Instagram took 2.5 years, Facebook 4.5. More tellingly, ChatGPT hit 365 billion annual searches within two years of its launch – a milestone Google took 11 years to reach from its 1998 debut, making ChatGPT’s search adoption 5.5 times faster (Page 21). This isn’t just about one popular app; it’s indicative of AI’s inherent capacity for explosive, immediate global reach, piggybacking on decades of internet infrastructure build-out.

Unlike the internet’s gradual, U.S.-centric initial spread, AI’s adoption is strikingly simultaneous and worldwide. The report highlights AI tools achieving significant U.S. household penetration in an estimated three years, half the time it took mobile internet (Page 60), signaling truly how AI is amplifying life’s biggest trends.

What’s Under the Hood of This Hyper-Acceleration?

Several interlocking factors, as outlined by BOND (Pages 3, 15-17, 253), are turbocharging AI’s ascent:

1. Exponential Tech Leaps: Breakthroughs in Large Language Models (LLMs) aren’t just incremental; they’re paradigm shifts, begging the question of what’s wrong with AI today, and what’s next. We’re seeing 1,150% growth in multimodal model releases in just two years (Page 253), and the performance gap between frontier and smaller models is narrowing, democratizing access.
2. Pre-Built Global Rails: AI leverages three decades of digital dataset creation and existing global internet infrastructure. This means new AI services can scale almost instantly.
3. Plummeting Access Costs (for some): While training remains astronomically expensive for frontier models, inference costs (running the AI) have plummeted by an astonishing 99.7% between 2022 and 2024. Computational efficiency has skyrocketed, with NVIDIA GPUs, for instance, showing a 105,000x energy efficiency gain in a decade for token generation (Pages 131, 137), raising questions about the future balance between AI advancements, energy vs size, and the Dyson Sphere hypothesis.
4. Hyper-Competition and Investment: An intense rivalry not just between Big Tech and startups, but geopolitically between nations (notably the U.S. and China – Page 272), is pouring unprecedented capital into the sector. This AI investment boom sees BOND report NVIDIA’s quarterly revenue up 78% Y/Y to $39 billion, while Google’s TPU sales are up 116% Y/Y to $8.9 billion (Page 161, 163). This isn’t just R&D; it’s an infrastructure gold rush showing how AI will transform capital.

But Wait, Weren’t We Here Before the Dot-Com Crash?

It’s a fair question, and the specter of the early 2000s internet bubble looms large. Many claimed “this time is different” back then too, right before a painful market correction. So, what, if anything, makes May 2025 different?

The BOND report offers some clues. While some “monetize later” vibes exist (OpenAI’s estimated $3.7B 2024 revenue against nearly $5B in compute expense – Page 174), key differences emerge:

• Proven Utility at Scale, Faster: AI tools are already demonstrating tangible productivity gains, leading to an AI-powered corporate revolution.
• Unprecedented Capital Intensity: Building frontier AI (Pages 121-124) requires billions. The “Big Six” CapEx hit $212B in 2024 (Pages 5, 102), highlighting the immense resources fueling how AI scaling lets a few-person startup compete.
• Direct Impact on Existing Revenue Streams: AI applications augment existing, profitable workflows, accelerating adaptation. This signals the great AI wealth reset across various sectors.
• Speed of Iteration Itself: AI model improvement (Pages 15-17) is faster than the internet’s underlying tech improvements in the late 90s, meaning AI becomes more useful more quickly.

Fresh Parallels: Beyond Business 101 Tropes

Let’s look at broader historical shifts:

1. The Electrification of Everything: AI is becoming a utility, much like electricity in the early 20th century, heralding a new era of intelligence. BOND details the CapEx in AI (Pages 95-105) akin to building a new industrial foundation.
2. The Penicillin Moment: AI’s rapid problem-solving in expert domains (Pages 234, 240) mirrors penicillin’s revolutionary medical impact, transforming industries with speed and demonstrating from the wheel to AI, how technology reshapes humanity.

The Sobering Realities of Warp Speed

This AI acceleration isn’t without profound implications:

• Workforce Whiplash: BOND shows AI job postings soaring +448% (Page 333), necessitating an urgent look at future-proofing your career in the face of an AI tsunami. It’s a rapid reshaping demanding adaptation; understanding why certain professions will survive the AI takeover is critical. This could even represent a path towards the economic singularity: AI, crypto, and the end of human labor.
• Geopolitical Stakes Magnified: The U.S.-China AI race (Page 272) is intensifying. With acceleration, the window to establish leadership, possibly determining will nation-state AI determine the next 1000-year superpower?, or influence global norms, such as AI proliferation and export controls, is shrinking.
• The Innovation-Regulation Gap: Ethical frameworks struggle to keep pace, as questions about consciousness and code: exploring the metaphysical nature of AI and AI biosafety threats become more urgent.

Navigating the AI Hyperloop: Insights for May 2025

• For Executives: It’s time for deep strategic integration. Consider how to achieve AI strategies for executive career longevity by mandating rapid AI uptake. Specialized AI tools (Pages 232-244) signal a need to look beyond general LLMs.
• For Investors: Discernment is key. BOND’s data on FCF margin compression (Page 175) contrasts with specialized AI growth (Pages 234, 238), demanding a look at how AI can help you build and preserve wealth and understand AI’s impact on wealth inequality. The energy sector is also a critical factor (Pages 125-129). Maybe consider if we will be paid in compute instead of cash.
• For Workers: “Lifelong learning” is an immediate imperative. As AI agents “do work” (Pages 89-92), human skills in critical thinking and strategic AI oversight become premium. Explore navigating the AI revolution: strategies for wealth and career resilience. It’s about effectively wielding AI, considering even the potential for unlearning digital habits for AI success.

The Future is Arriving Faster Than Scheduled

The AI revolution isn’t just “different”; BOND’s May 2025 data shows it’s on a new timescale, a true tipping point: humans vs AI. Understanding this velocity is crucial for thriving in what many foresee as a reality where the writing on the wall: why everything changes by 2035 becomes increasingly apparent.