Mercor now spends 3X as much on LLM inference as we spend on employee salaries. Our inference spend creates so much ROI that it’s additive to headcount, not replacing it. It’s becoming increasingly clear how we get to ~10% GDP growth: 1. Within 5 years, as AI diffuses throughout the economy, companies will spend as much on inference as they spend compensating knowledge workers today. 2. Knowledge-worker compensation is roughly $40T/year, so this would eventually mean ~$40T/year of inference spend. 3. If wages remain roughly constant and companies profitably absorb that much inference the way AI-native companies are today, the economy needs on the order of $40T/year of additional final economic output to support it. 4. Producing ~$40T more annual GDP in year 5 than a ~3% growth baseline implies ~9% annual GDP growth on average over the next five years. Based on the ROI we’re already seeing from inference at Mercor, this feels reasonable. AI-native companies are a leading indicator for the global economy.