The Economics of Digital Intelligence Capital: Endogenous Depreciation and the Structural Jevons Paradox

This paper develops a micro-founded economic theory of the AI industry by modeling large language models as a distinct asset class-Digital Intelligence Capital-characterized by data-compute complementarities, increasing returns to scale, and relative (rather than absolute) valuation. We show that these features fundamentally reshape industry dynamics along three dimensions. First, because downstream demand depends on relative capability, innovation by one firm endogenously depreciates the econom...