a16z Infographic Trends: AI costs halved this year while usage doubled, American 30-year-olds' life milestones are being pushed back across the board

a16z Weekly Chart Report: AI costs halve while usage doubles; by 2026, tech capital expenditures will approach the total new bank loans in the U.S.

Author: a16z New Media

Translation: Deep潮 TechFlow

Original link: https://www.a16z.news/p/charts-of-the-week-dexit-real-or

Deep潮 Guide: This week’s a16z chart weekly covers four topics, each worthy of a separate article: AI cost reductions triggering the Jevons effect, the true scale of tech giants’ capital spending, Kalshi’s prediction markets outperforming professional forecasting agencies, and the widespread delay in life milestones among 30-year-olds in the U.S. The data sources are solid, and the perspectives are calm and restrained—high-quality references for understanding the intersection of current tech and macro trends.

DExit… Is it a real trend or just an illusion?

Delaware remains the preferred state for company registration in the U.S., but this position is quietly weakening:

According to Ramp data, Delaware’s share of new company registrations has been steadily declining since 2023, with a drop of about 10% in Q3 2025.

History doesn’t simply repeat itself, but it often rhymes… maybe.

Delaware has not always been the holy land for business registration.

About a century ago, Delaware replaced New Jersey—the original “Trust Mother”—as the top state for company registration. New Jersey lost its advantage because then-Governor Woodrow Wilson tried to curb “corporate abuse,” which severely worsened the business environment there. Delaware’s corporate law was modeled after pre-Wilson New Jersey law, naturally welcoming departing companies. Over nearly 100 years, combined with the Delaware Court of Chancery, it built a reputation as a fair and mature forum for resolving corporate and investor disputes.

However, what took a century to establish has begun to shake in just a few years. Regardless of right or wrong, the Delaware Court of Chancery has recently adopted a more lenient stance on shareholder lawsuits (notably several high-profile cases, including but not limited to Tesla), prompting companies to seriously consider relocating their registration elsewhere. Farewell, good luck, Delaware.

This is at least the mainstream narrative, but other data suggest the situation is more complex.

First, even the founding myth of Delaware isn’t entirely accurate.

It wasn’t until the 1980s (about 60 years into Wilson’s governorship) that Delaware truly surpassed New Jersey to become the state with the highest number of business registrations:

New Jersey’s dominance lasted much longer than mainstream narratives suggest. The catalyst for Delaware’s eventual overtaking was likely a series of laws related to director responsibilities that made Delaware-incorporated companies especially attractive, combined with network effects that reinforced this inertia.

Second, regardless of what’s happening with high-profile public companies (and those in Ramp data), Delaware overall still performs well—arguably better than just “good”:

According to data from Harvard Law School’s Forum on Corporate Governance, from late 2024 through 2025, Delaware’s share of the total U.S. corporate count actually increased significantly.

In fact, if you’re looking for a clear “DExit” case, it’s probably this one, and it has nothing to do with Tesla but involves a specific corporate form:

Wyoming LLCs began to grow rapidly around 2015.

Why? Likely due to specific asset protection and privacy provisions in Wyoming’s LLC laws, which the state promotes as a “cowboy cocktail” of advantages.

In summary, the point isn’t that DExit isn’t happening (since at least some data indicate it is—though only a few high-profile companies leaving is significant), but that the reality is more complicated than the mainstream narrative suggests.

The truth is, Delaware still enjoys the advantage of being the default choice, along with all the network effects tied to it, which are hard to shake.

We previously published an early version of this chart, but as data increased, the effect became even more striking.

Token costs decrease, token consumption increases:

Since the beginning of this year, paid token prices have fallen from about $0.90 per million tokens to $0.50, while the number of tokens processed nearly doubled—from about 6,000 to 12,000.

This is a classic Jevons effect. The cheaper AI becomes, the more we use it. It’s encouraging.

Remember when someone said that once better GPUs hit the market, old GPUs would become obsolete?

It seems that’s not quite the case:

According to Silicon Data, the rental prices for Nvidia H100 and A100 have increased this year.

There’s no sign of oversupply in computing power; in fact, demand seems to be barely scratched.

This comparison isn’t perfect, but if history offers any clues, it may take some more time before we truly understand what an “AI-driven” economy looks like:

From Faraday and Henry’s initial discussions of electric current to the explosion of industrial productivity in the early 20th century, it took about 100 years.

Since the 1820s, technological iteration cycles have indeed sped up, but a platform-level shift involves many variables.

Roy Amara’s famous quote: “We tend to overestimate the change in the next two years and underestimate the change in the next ten.”

Capital Expenditures, viewed on a coordinate axis

Let’s look at this timeless data: AI capital expenditures are substantial.

Compare the following:

By 2026, AI capital spending is projected to approach the total net new bank loans in the U.S. in 2025:

Capital expenditures are about 33% higher than total corporate income tax revenue in the U.S., roughly three times the amount of tariffs:

Capital expenditures are about six times the military budgets of any G7 non-U.S. country:

So yes, the scale of capital spending is truly enormous.

Kalshi’s move into macro forecasting

Federal Reserve researchers believe prediction markets are quite effective.

At least for one metric, Kalshi’s forecast of the federal funds rate has already outperformed professional forecasting agencies:

For the forecast of the federal funds rate 150 days ahead (after three FOMC meetings), Kalshi’s average absolute error is very close to that of professional forecasters. Unlike surveys that provide only a modal path snapshot every six weeks, Kalshi offers continuous updates of the full probability distribution… We found that Kalshi’s median and mode predictions perfectly recorded the FOMC meeting’s rate prediction the day before, which is a statistically significant improvement over federal funds futures forecasts.

In other words, although all predictors start from similar points, Kalshi’s “continuously updated” forecasts keep improving over time, ultimately achieving “perfect prediction” the day before the rate is officially announced. Moreover, Kalshi’s performance surpasses that of futures markets.

Kalshi’s advantage isn’t limited to the federal funds rate. As Fed researchers note, because macro indicators like inflation, growth, and unemployment lack other options markets, Kalshi is the only place providing “high-frequency, continuously updated, rich probability distribution benchmarks” to reflect the “public’s” view on these economic trends.

That sounds quite important.

The delay in reaching adulthood

This is a thought-provoking chart, with some commentary:

The proportion of 30-year-olds reaching major life milestones has been declining quite steeply since at least the 1980s.

Among 30-year-olds, fewer and fewer are:

Living independently;

Getting married;

Living with children;

Owning their own home.

The only exception is college enrollment—the proportion of 30-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree has nearly doubled since 1995.

So, is college worth it?

Milestones? More like a grindstone for the neck, right?!

Maybe, maybe not, but the feeling of “buyer’s remorse” seems to be spreading in the air.