Three Waves of AI Token Demand: Physical AI Pulls Cloud and Hardware at Once
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-08-18
The thread lays out three waves of AI token demand: token consumption is projected to grow 24x over the next four years, driven not by chat but by the second wave — continuously running, mass-deployed agents.
The third wave is Physical AI: humanoid robots, robotaxis and autonomous machines. These consume tokens all day while also needing chips, memory, sensors and power systems — a single robot pulls both cloud inference and physical hardware demand. If this holds, AI infrastructure may only be entering its second stage.
Related event: Investor chart: token demand to grow 24x by 2030 in three waves(2 posts)→
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