Trillions are pouring into AI infrastructure.
Yet most companies still can’t show a dollar of real productivity gain.
Kevin Chen, chief economist at Horizon Financial, said something on our podcast that stuck with me: “The market loves the idea of AI. But when companies announce something with no real follow-up, no actual benefit—the stock price crashes.”
Exactly.
Here’s what I see building AI infrastructure inside companies:
Most AI projects fail because they’re bolted onto legacy systems. Expensive. Fragile. No real ROI.
The founders winning right now? They’re building differently.
Three things they obsess over:
Build the right foundation first—not yesterday’s technology with AI wrapped around it.
Measure what actually matters: operational efficiency, cost savings, revenue impact. That’s it.
Start small, iterate fast, prove results before scaling.
Real example:
A construction company deployed AI agents. One worker + three AI machines doing the same task = 4x productivity, 75% cost reduction.
No announcement. No hype. Just results in their P&L.
The infrastructure investment is massive. The energy requirements are real. The timeline is longer than most want to admit.
That’s exactly why the winners will emerge.
Because they’re building for execution, not for the headline.
Thanks to Kevin for the macro perspective on this. The conversation between global economics and real-world AI deployment? That’s where the opportunity lives.
Full episode on Shaping Fin Gen AI. https://lnkd.in/eDQA97Qb
If you’re deploying AI into your financial infrastructure, you already know this.
Infrastructure beats hype every single time.
