Masters in Business · Friday, September 18, 2026
Glen Kacher likens the current AI build-out to the 15-25 year shift from client-server to internet architecture, predicting a decade-long demand cycle. He explains AI's complexity and compute intensity, creating custom solutions for each query, requires significant, long-term investment.
“Well, I mean, I think we're changing the entire stack of computing. The only thing that looks like this that we've experienced before is the move to the Internet architecture from client-server. And, you know, these computing cycles happen about every, you know, 15 to 25 years since, you know, since the development of computing.”
“And the way the technology works... is completely different. You know, in the old school of technology is search and retrieve or create, search and then retrieve model where you stored things in databases. And here in the AI world, the technology is essentially creating a custom solution, custom to your question, custom to your data every single time you use it. It's just a much more complex and compute-intensive model.”