Mainframes went to PCs and back to AWS: why the AI infra doom analogy is incomplete
sandeepssrin · x · 2026-11-07
Responding to Vivek Wadhwa's Hindustan Times column advising India to stay out of Silicon Valley's AI infrastructure bets, @sandeepssrin argues the historical analogy is incomplete. Mainframes didn't die with PCs — computing circled back to AWS cloud, which is "as mainframeish as you can get." Meanwhile, the "fruit company" and the "furniture company" both failed to capitalize on owning the OS/hardware, and a grocery company won out. His point: paradigm-shift winners are rarely the obvious incumbents, but that doesn't mean the bets simply turn to toast.
Related event: Trillion-Dollar Data Center Debate: Wadhwa's Warning Draws Backlash(4 posts)→
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