Sequoia: The AI wave contains a $10 trillion opportunity, with transformative power comparable to the Industrial Revolution

BlockBeats News, August 29 — Sequoia Capital has defined the current wave of artificial intelligence as a profound "Cognitive Revolution," believing its transformative power will rival or even surpass the Industrial Revolution, and that it contains a massive business opportunity worth $10 trillion. Recently, Sequoia Capital partner Konstantine Buhler delivered a speech titled "The AI Revolution: A $10 Trillion Wave, Greater Than the Industrial Revolution." In his speech, he made it clear that the next battleground for AI is the vast service industry market. Similar to how SaaS software not only eroded the share of traditional software but also greatly expanded the boundaries of the entire market, AI will also bring disruptive transformation and expansion to the service industry. Likewise, AI will disrupt and expand traditional service sectors such as law, accounting, and healthcare, which have historically been dominated by large partnership firms, giving rise to entirely new AI-driven public companies and even changing the S&P 500 index list as we know it today.

At the dawn of the "Cognitive Revolution," Sequoia Capital is actively seeking and investing in startups that can "specialize" general AI technology. These companies, much like Rockefeller and Carnegie in their era, are tasked with building the market leaders of the future by refining general AI models into "cognitive assembly lines" that address specific industry pain points. Over the next 12–18 months, Sequoia will focus on five key investment themes: persistent memory; seamless communication protocols between AIs; AI voice; end-to-end AI security; and open-source AI.