The Economy Beyond AI - The Gravity Companies Series - Episode 1

The AI frenzy has concentrated investor enthusiasm, media coverage, and cultural prestige around companies perceived to be directly in the AI value chain — chips, cloud infrastructure, LLMs, data centers, and AI-native applications. In the process, much of the rest of the economy has faded into the background.How do employees at “non-AI” companies feel while watching the market celebrate a different category of firms? How should leaders of these companies think about motivation, ambition, and relevance in an era where technological excitement has become concentrated in a narrow segment of the economy?In this three-part series, I will argue that the real economy is still run by what I call Gravity Companies. These are the companies closest to operational complexity, economic accountability, and real-world execution. They move goods, finance systems, power infrastructure, manufacture products, and operate the institutional machinery upon which economies actually function.Far from being displaced by AI, many gravity companies stand to benefit enormously from it. This series will explore three questions:· What are gravity companies?· Why are they receiving disproportionately little attention?· And how can their leaders reposition their companies?