The least glamorous AI use case might be the most interesting business.

Batch processing — running massive async compute jobs in bursts — has been around forever.

But pay-as-you-go cloud changed the economics completely.

Now companies can spend $0 for weeks, then spin up $1M worth of compute over a few days to fold proteins, transcribe audio, or prepare datasets.

No idle servers. No wasted spend. Just pure burst compute on demand.

The AI hype cycle focuses on chatbots. The money is in the infrastructure running quietly in the background.