During the gold rush of the late 1800s, thousands of people rushed west hoping to strike it rich digging for gold. Some did. Many didn’t. But there was one group that made steady money almost the entire time: the people selling the tools.
Shovels. Picks. Pans. Boots. Tents. Food.
If you were a miner, you needed those things whether you found gold or not.
A famous example is Levi Strauss, who sold durable pants to miners during the California Gold Rush. That small business eventually became Levi Strauss & Co.. He didn’t dig for gold. He sold the miners what they needed.
I think we are seeing something very similar today with Artificial Intelligence.
Right now, thousands of companies are rushing into AI hoping to strike the “next big thing.” Chatbots, image generators, AI assistants, automated research tools, coding tools, video tools… the list grows every week.
Some of these companies will become huge successes.
Many will disappear.
But just like the gold rush, there are companies quietly making money from every single AI project, whether that project succeeds or fails.
They are the modern shovel sellers.
For example, companies like NVIDIA design the powerful GPUs that train AI models. Without those chips, modern AI simply would not run. Other companies like TSMC manufacture the advanced semiconductors used in those systems. And companies like ASML build the incredibly sophisticated machines required to manufacture those chips in the first place.
In other words, they are selling the picks and shovels of the AI gold rush.
Then there is the infrastructure layer. AI requires massive computing power and enormous data centers. Companies such as Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Alphabet provide the cloud infrastructure that allows AI companies to train and operate their systems.
Every new AI startup needs that computing power.
Every new AI model requires data centers.
Every new AI service consumes electricity, chips, cooling systems, and networking.
So while the world is focused on which AI chatbot will win, there is a deeper layer underneath the entire ecosystem: the infrastructure that makes AI possible.
History often rhymes.
In the internet boom of the 1990s, thousands of websites appeared and disappeared. But companies that built the underlying infrastructure—servers, networking equipment, software platforms—became long-term giants.
The same dynamic may be playing out again today.
We may remember the AI era for the clever applications people use every day. But the biggest and most durable businesses may end up being the ones quietly supplying the tools, chips, data centers, and power that make the entire system work.
In every gold rush, miners chase the gold.
But the shovel sellers build the real foundations of the boom. ⛏️