Software Ate the World. What Happens When AI Eats the Cost of Software?

In August 2011, Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz (now one of the top five VC firms in the world), wrote an article called "Why Software Is Eating the World." I think about this article often. In it, he laid out his reasoning for why software had taken up such a large share of most industries, and why he believed it would continue to do so. This was at a time when most headlines thought software was a bubble.

"All of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale."

He backed it up with numbers:

"In 2000, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month. Running that same application today in Amazon's cloud costs about $1,500 a month."

Safe to say, he was very correct. Software has completely taken over almost every industry on the back of decreasing distribution costs.

So what happens if AI craters the cost of creating the software as well?