BlackRock's Tony Kim discusses the shift from a software-centric world to a compute-centric AI era and what it means for global technology investing today.

We’ve moved from an asset-light, software-centric world to an asset-heavy, compute-centric world where the physical limits of chips and power are suddenly more important than the code itself.
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Tony Kim is the head of the global technology team at BlackRock. He is a prominent figure in the investment world, focusing on how major technological shifts impact the global stock market. In this discussion, he provides insights into the transition from the traditional software-dominated landscape to the new AI era, which he refers to as the "AD" era of technology.
According to Tony Kim, the script has flipped between software and hardware. In the previous "BCE" era, software was king, and high-margin applications were built on cheap, commodity hardware. Today, we have moved into a compute-centric world where hardware is no longer just plumbing. The base layer of compute has seen a massive transformation, with server costs jumping from ten thousand dollars to million-dollar machines.
A compute-centric world represents a complete transformation of value in the technology sector. While the market previously prioritized the ten trillion dollars in software and internet services, the focus has shifted toward the infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence. This shift is characterized by a 10,000x jump in the cost and importance of the base layer of compute, making hardware the central driver of the AI era.
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