Will Hardware Beat Software in the AI Agent Era?
Software's Swan Song
FORWARD:
Read these previous letters before this one:
[Will Generative AI Bring Software to $0? [2025] - [Unlock Near-Unlimited AI Power for Pennies [2025] & [Genesis of Pay Per Crawl [2025]
The Quick Pitch: Why Hardware Is Your Next Big Bet
Apps are fading because AI agents (those smart “robots” that handle tasks like booking rides or drafting emails) run best on your devices, not far-off clouds. I can 100% tell the NPC’s have no idea this is the case.
IT RUNS BETTER ON YOUR DEVICES NOT A CLOUD! Consider why Graphics Cards are almost more valuable than gold today…once only used for gaming to now being the heart and soul of the crypto market.
This shift to “edge computing” (AI close to where data lives) means hardware — chips, phones, even old gadgets — becomes the backbone.
No more endless cloud bills; instead, fast, private, cheap power right in your pocket or home. The math? Edge AI hardware market: $26B in 2025 → $59B by 2030 (17.6% yearly growth).
By 2025, 50%+ of data from edge devices like your phone.
Hardware wins because agents need speed (low lag), smarts (AI chips), and juice (big memory) — all without guzzling power.
The Star Players: Hardware That’ll Make (or Break) the Agent World
Not all gear is equal. Agents thrive on “edge” hardware: stuff that crunches AI locally, like a mini-brain in your toaster. Here’s the MVPs, ranked by impact, with why they matter and fresh 2025 data.
Software’s boom is real—global AI software hits $174B this year, racing to $467B by 2030 at 25% CAGR.
Agents like Salesforce’s Agentforce or Cognition’s Devin aren’t just automating; they’re orchestrating—chaining tasks from code review to deployment without human handoffs. Which is insane this is happening quietly without people fully understanding the importance…
PwC’s May survey? 88% of execs are hiking AI budgets for these “agentic” plays. These guys arent smart but even they can see the writing on the wall.
Hardware: The Unsung Sovereign
Software dreams; hardware delivers.
In the agent era, intelligence migrates to the “edge”—your phone, factory sensor, or warehouse drone—demanding chips that think faster than they heat up.
TOPS (trillions of operations per second) tell the tale: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon hits 45 TOPS for laptop agents; NVIDIA’s Jetson Thor packs 2,000 for autonomous bots. By 2030, 87% of AI runs on-device—privacy-first, lag-free.
ARM’s CEO? He bets embedded chips for “physical AI” (robots, wearables) eclipse data centers. I am not a fan of wearables but we know it will be edgeware and dorks that suck the balls of Apple’s “features” will glom at the chance to be “first”.
My predictive thought: Hardware isn’t just backbone—it’s the beating heart.
The Verdict: Yes, Hardware Claims the Crown
Software birthed the agent revolution, but hardware will embody it.
Why? Agents demand embodiment (think of the Matrix using humans as batteries…that is the road we are on extrapolated)—sensors fusing with silicon for a drone dodging raindrops or glasses translating menus in real-time.
Global AI hardware? $66.8B in 2025, ballooning to $296B by 2034 (18% CAGR).
Edge chips alone? $8.3B to $36B (17.75% CAGR).
The moat? Physics.
You can’t commoditize a 50 TOPS NPU etched in 2nm silicon like you can fork open-source code.
Robotics will overtake pure software AI—machines learn by doing.
By 2030, humanoid sales? 105M units, each a hardware-software symphony.
Software evolves weekly; hardware endures decades. In agents’ world, the edge wins.
This is why i wrote that most SaaS’s will inevitably go to $0. The internet becomes two hardware devices talking to eachother to give you (the user) the information/video requested. Even just your ad data alone will bring this to fruition let alone semantic searching.
What You Can Do Now: Ride the Hardware Wave
You’re not late—the gold rush is just cresting.
Timeline: 5-10x returns by 2030 if agents hit 50% enterprise apps.
Gear Up Your Life:
Rabbit R1 Pro ($199): Pocket agent runner—Llama 4 offline.
iPhone 17 Pro (~$1,300, 2026): 200 TOPS NPU for swarm agents.
Revive Old Tech: Dust off that 2020 Mac Mini—quantized models run local agents for pennies. Rent spare GPU on Vast.ai: $300/month passive.
Build & Monetize:
Free starter: LangChain + DeepSeek on a Raspberry Pi 5 (6 TOPS).
Craft a “Market Agent” for haggling—sell as $10/month service.
Skill: Claude/Kimi Moonshot: learn—orchestrate one agent this weekend.
The Future Runs on Yesterday’s Silicon
As AI agents replace apps and demand local, cheap, repairable compute — old hardware becomes the new GPU gold.
No nostalgia. No fluff. Just scarcity + utility = 10x returns in 4 years of holding.
Smart thing to do would be to just start collecting any and all GPU’s that you can. Look at these items in my “Top 10”.
Playbook:
1. Buy Cheap, Run Hot
Source: eBay “sold listings”, Facebook Marketplace, r/hardwareswap, local repair shops
Test: Burn-in with ‘stress-ng’, check VRAM with ‘cuda-memtest’
Upgrade: $50 SSD + $30 RAM = 3x performance
2. Monetize Immediately
3. Hold for Flip (opinion: best investment that isnt Bitcoin, Silver or Land)
Timeline: 2–5 years
Target: 5–10x as new hardware stays scarce
Exit: eBay, Bring a Trailer (for rare Macs), crypto mining forums
Final Truth
The best GPU in 2030 won’t be the newest — it’ll be the one you bought in 2025 for $200.
AI agents don’t care about RGB.
They care about VRAM, cores, and uptime. Your move:
Buy one 1080 Ti this week.
Run Llama 3.1 8B locally.
Rent it out.
Watch the future pay you.
What do you think? Can you prove me wrong?
God-Willing, see you at the next letter.
Think Free & Stack Sats!
GRACE & PEACE