The Agentic Economy Is Forming

AI agents are crossing the viability threshold. Not because models got smarter — though they did — but because a wave of software optimizations is about to cut inference costs by 10–20x. A $3–5 AI contract review becomes $0.30. At that price, you run it on everything.

The first viable agents won't replace cheap repetitive tasks. They'll replace expensive human judgment — $500/hour legal reviews, M&A due diligence, clinical workflows. Only high-value tasks absorb messy inference costs today.

The Rubin Build-Out 100 tracks the supply side of AI. Now the demand side is forming. And it's bigger.

We are designing the Closelook Agentic Ecosystem Index: seven layers, 24 sectors, 130–150 companies. Silicon & Architecture, Inference Infrastructure, Toll Booth Infrastructure, Foundation Models & Orchestration, Horizontal Agent Applications, Vertical Agent Applications, and Backdoor Exposure.

What makes this different: a viability timeline overlay. Each sector tagged Phase 1 (viable now), Phase 2 (2027–2029), Phase 3 (commodity inference, 2029+). Plus a two-tier structure: ~90 public companies with price tracking, plus a ~50-company private pipeline.

The Rubin tracks what enables inference. The Agentic Index tracks what inference enables. Together they map the full AI economy.