// dispatch 001 · framing the question early
What if AI compute and inference become commodities, traded on infrastructure modelled on the electricity grid?
AI Utility Grid is a research and speculative-design publication for the period before that future arrives. We borrow the vocabulary of power markets — capacity, load, settlement, grade — and use it to interrogate where the next decade of AI infrastructure may be heading. The point is not to predict. The point is to ask the right questions early, in public.
flagship essay
AI as the Next Utility
If electricity teaches us anything about how foundational technologies grow up, the next decade of AI infrastructure will not look like the cloud — it will look like a grid. Here is the case, and the questions it forces us to ask now.
// the five framings
Five ways AI might commoditise.
Each framing pictures a different unit of trade. None are mutually exclusive; the interesting question is which assumptions each one rests on, and which are doing the most invisible work.
- 01 / 05
Compute-Backed Inference Tokens
A token of model output, at a defined quality grade and latency window, treated as the unit of trade. The most direct analogue to electricity-by-the-kWh.
Inference Tokens → - 02 / 05
Capacity Futures
The right to N GPU-hours of class-Z hardware in calendar quarter Q. Closer to natural gas or aluminium than to electricity — and the most likely framing to arrive first.
Capacity Futures → - 03 / 05
Training-FLOP Commodities
The FLOP-hour of training compute, at specified precision and interconnect grade, treated as a raw material distinct from inference. The supply-demand dynamics on each side are different enough that pretending they're the same will obscure both.
Training FLOPs → - 04 / 05
Crypto-Native AI Tokens
A chain-issued token redeemable for compute, with settlement, identity, and metering on a ledger. Whether this framing dominates depends largely on whether the regulatory regime for the others is built inside or outside the existing financial system.
Crypto Tokens → - 05 / 05
Output & Data Rights
The right to use specified model output, or to have one's data excluded from training. Not compute at all — but the framing closest to existing IP markets, and likely the first to clear at scale.
Output Rights →