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Applied AI·July 22, 2026·1 min read

This Time Is Different: Why AI Is Unlike Any Wave I Have Seen In 40 Years Of Financial Services

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When a 40-year FS veteran argues AI will drive near-zero marginal costs and hyper-personalized products, the bar for “good enough” digital banking just moved. Banks and fintechs that don’t already have concrete AI experiments in underwriting, servicing, and product design are effectively conceding future margin.

Applied AI

Source: OpenAI raised its projected cloud spending to ~$750B through 2030, up from a projection of ~$600B earlier this year, reflecting new cloud agreements

A projected ~$750B in cloud spend through 2030 makes AI compute look like a sovereign-scale utility, not a SaaS line item. If your roadmap depends on hyperscaler economics, assume AI capacity will be pre-allocated by a few anchor tenants and lock in long-term commitments or alternative providers sooner than you planned.