Author: a16z New Media
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
Original link:https://www.a16z.news/p/charts-of-the-week-dexit-real-or
Deep Tide Introduction: This edition of a16z's Charts of the Week covers four topics, each worthy of its own article: falling AI costs triggering the Jevons effect, the true scale of tech giant capital expenditures, Kalshi prediction markets outperforming professional forecasting agencies, and the comprehensive delay of life milestones for 30-year-olds in the US. The data sources are solid, and the perspective is calm and restrained, making it a high-quality reference for understanding the intersection of current tech and macro trends.
DExit......Real Trend or Illusion?
Delaware remains the preferred state for US corporate registration, but this position is quietly loosening:
According to Ramp's data, Delaware's share of new company registrations has been declining since 2023, with a drop of about 10% in Q3 2025.
History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but it often rhymes......maybe.
Delaware hasn't always been the holy land for corporate registration.
About a century ago, Delaware replaced New Jersey—the original "Mother of Trusts"—as the preferred state for incorporation. New Jersey lost its advantage because then-Governor Woodrow Wilson tried to curb "corporate abuses," severely worsening the state's business environment. Delaware's corporate law was modeled on pre-Wilson era New Jersey law and was happy to welcome the departing companies. It then, along with the Delaware Court of Chancery, spent nearly 100 years building a reputation as a mature and fair venue for resolving disputes between companies and investors.
However, what took a century to build began to动摇 in just a few years. Rightly or wrongly, the Delaware Court of Chancery has recently taken a more lenient stance on shareholder litigation (especially in several high-profile cases, including but not limited to Tesla), and companies have really started moving their registrations elsewhere. Goodnight, and good luck, Delaware.
This is at least the mainstream narrative, but other data shows the situation is more complex.
First, even Delaware's founding myth itself isn't entirely accurate.
It wasn't until the 1980s (about 60 years after Governor Wilson's term) that Delaware truly surpassed New Jersey to become the number one state in the US for the number of corporate registrations:
New Jersey dominated for much longer than the mainstream narrative suggests. The catalyst for Delaware's eventual overtaking was likely its passage of a series of laws related to director liability, which were particularly favored by public companies, coupled with network effects that continuously reinforced themselves, creating their own inertia.
Second, regardless of what's happening with high-profile public companies (and the companies in Ramp's data), Delaware as a whole still seems to be doing well, even more than well:
According to data published by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, Delaware's share of the total number of US companies actually increased significantly from late 2024 to 2025.
In fact, if you're looking for a clear case of "DExit," it's probably this one, and it has nothing to do with Tesla, but rather involves a specific type of company structure:
Wyoming LLCs began to surge around 2015.
Why? This is likely related to specific asset protection and privacy provisions in Wyoming's LLC law, which the state itself promotes as a "cowboy cocktail."
In short, the point here is not to say that DExit isn't happening (because at least some data suggests it is—even if it's just a few high-profile companies moving out, it's significant), but the reality is certainly more complex than the mainstream narrative presents.
The reality is that Delaware still enjoys the advantage of being the default option, not to mention all the network effects tied to it, and these are very difficult to shake.
We published an earlier version of this chart before, but as more data comes in, the effect becomes more stunning.
Token costs fall, Token consumption rises:
Since the beginning of this year, paid Token pricing has dropped from about 90 cents per million Tokens to 50 cents, while the number of Tokens processed has nearly doubled, from about 6,000 to 12,000.
This is a typical Jevons effect. The cheaper AI gets, the more AI we use. Delightful.
Remember when people said that when newer, better GPUs came out, the old ones would be unwanted?
That doesn't quite seem to be the case either:
According to Silicon Data, rental prices for NVIDIA's H100 and A100 have both increased this year.
The market is far from showing signs of a compute oversupply; instead, it seems we haven't even scratched the surface of existing demand.
This comparison isn't a perfect analogy, but if history offers any reference, it might take us a while longer to truly see what an "AI-driven" economy really looks like:
From the initial discussions of electric current by Faraday and Henry to the true explosion of industrial productivity waves in the first half of the 20th century, it took about 100 years.
Technology iteration cycles have indeed accelerated since the 1820s, but the variables involved in a platform-level shift are still extremely numerous.
Roy Amara famously said, "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run." (Paraphrased common interpretation of the quote).
Capital Expenditure, Put in Perspective
Here's some data that never gets old: AI capital expenditure is huge.
Consider these comparisons:
2026 AI capex is projected to be close to the total net new lending by US banks in 2025:
Capex is about 33% higher than total US corporate income tax revenue and about 3 times the total tariff revenue:
Capex is about 6 times the total military budget of any non-US G7 member country:
So, yes, capital expenditure is really huge.
Kalshi Moves into Macro Prediction
Federal Reserve researchers think prediction markets are pretty good.
At least on one metric, Kalshi's predictions for the federal funds rate have already outperformed professional forecasting agencies:
For predictions of the federal funds rate 150 days later (i.e., after 3 FOMC meetings), Kalshi's mean absolute error is very close to that of professional forecasters. But unlike surveys that provide only a modal path snapshot every six weeks, Kalshi provides a continuously updated full probability distribution...... We find that Kalshi's median and mode predictions have a perfect prediction record the day before FOMC meetings, which is a statistically significant improvement over federal funds futures predictions.
In other words, while all predictors start out similar, Kalshi's "continuously updated" predictions optimize over time, eventually achieving a "perfect prediction record" the day before the rate is officially announced. Furthermore, Kalshi's performance is also better than predictions from futures markets.
Kalshi's advantage extends beyond the federal funds rate. As the Fed researchers point out, since there are no other options markets for macroeconomic indicators like inflation, growth, and unemployment, Kalshi is the only place that provides a "high-frequency, continuously updated, probability distribution-rich benchmark" reflecting "crowd" judgment on the direction of these economic indicators.
Sounds pretty important.
The Delay of Adulthood
Here is a thought-provoking chart, with (a little) commentary:
The proportion of 30-year-olds achieving major life milestones has been declining quite steeply since at least the 1980s.
Fewer and fewer 30-year-olds:
Live independently;
>Have ever been married; >Live with children; >Own their home.The only exception is college enrollment rates—the proportion of 30-year-olds with a bachelor's degree has almost doubled since 1995.
So, is college worth it?
Milestones? More like milestones around the neck, right?!
Maybe, maybe not, but a sense of "buyer's remorse" seems to be in the air.
