The $100B Question: Why AI Infrastructure Spending Matters for Small Businesses
Meta just dropped $100B on AMD chips. Here's why massive AI infrastructure deals trickle down to the tools your small business uses every day.
TJ Meaney
Meta just agreed to buy $100 billion worth of AMD chips. Not million — billion, with a B.
That kind of number feels completely disconnected from reality if you're running a small business. You're thinking about payroll, client deadlines, maybe whether to upgrade your website this quarter. What does a hyperscaler spending the GDP of a small country on GPUs have to do with you?
More than you'd think.
The Trickle-Down Effect Is Real
Every major wave of infrastructure investment eventually changes what tools are available — and what they cost — for everyone else.
When Amazon built AWS, they weren't thinking about your local HVAC company. They were solving their own scaling problems. But a decade later, that same infrastructure lets a five-person agency spin up enterprise-grade hosting for $20 a month.
The AI infrastructure buildout happening right now follows the same pattern. Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are in an arms race to build the compute capacity that powers AI models. They're spending obscene amounts of money so the models get faster, cheaper, and more capable.
And that directly affects you.
What Actually Changes for Small Businesses
Here's the practical version of what $100B in AI chips means for your business over the next 12 to 24 months:
AI tools get cheaper
More compute supply means lower prices. The AI tools you're already paying for — whether that's ChatGPT, Claude, Jasper, or whatever you use for content and customer service — will either drop in price or get dramatically more capable at the same price. Probably both.
"AI features" become table stakes
Every software product you use is racing to add AI capabilities. Your CRM, your email platform, your project management tool, your website builder. The infrastructure buildout accelerates this. When compute is abundant and cheap, every SaaS company can afford to bake AI into their product. That means you'll get better tools without switching vendors.
Local AI becomes viable
This is the sleeper hit. As chip manufacturers compete for enterprise contracts, the consumer and small business hardware improves too. We're already seeing AI models that run on a laptop. In two years, running your own AI assistant on a $500 machine will be normal. No API costs, no data leaving your office.
The capability gap shrinks
Right now, large enterprises have access to AI tools and talent that small businesses don't. But infrastructure spending compresses that gap faster than anything else. The same models that Fortune 500 companies use to analyze millions of data points will be available to you through a $30/month subscription.
What You Should Actually Do
You don't need to understand the AMD deal or follow chip architecture news. But you should be doing three things:
1. Stay on current tools. If you're already using AI tools in your business, don't switch unless something is genuinely broken. The tools you have are about to get a lot better with no effort on your part.
2. Budget for AI in 2026. If you haven't allocated any budget for AI tools, now's the time. The ROI is about to get very favorable as prices drop and capabilities increase. Even $50 to $100 a month in the right tools can save hours of work per week.
3. Watch for integration, not novelty. The real wins aren't flashy new AI products. They're AI features showing up inside tools you already use. Pay attention to update notes from your existing software. The best AI upgrade might be one you already have access to.
The Bottom Line
When you see headlines about $100 billion AI deals, the instinct is to scroll past. It feels like big tech theater — a world that has nothing to do with running your business.
But every dollar those companies pour into AI infrastructure eventually makes its way to you in the form of better, cheaper, more capable tools. The small business owners who pay attention to that trickle-down — and position themselves to take advantage — are the ones who pull ahead.
You don't need to spend $100 billion. You just need to be ready when the benefits of that spending land on your doorstep.
Need help figuring out which AI tools actually make sense for your business? Let's talk — we help small businesses cut through the noise and focus on what works.