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Hello reader.
When the first boxcar filled with Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup left the company’s plant in Camden, New Jersey, in 1898, it ran over tracks built years earlier by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company.
While P&R was already bankrupt at that point, Campbell Company (CPB) It became a publicly traded staple worth tens of billions at its peak — with billions of cans sold and found in nearly every grocery store in America.
A delicious reminder that yesterday’s failed builders often form the foundation for tomorrow’s success.
Every technological breakthrough starts the same way.
Pioneer builds “rails”. For a brief moment, investors applaud these visionaries.
But then the optimistic vision collides with reality. Demand is arriving slower than expected, and construction workers are struggling to survive.
Even when this leading group often fails, a follower group emerges and capitalizes on those failures. They don’t build new technology. They use it.
In doing so, these enterprising companies are building empires on infrastructure paid for by some unfortunate “first mover.”
And we’ve seen this exact movie in recent history…on the Internet.
In the late 1990s, investors poured trillions of dollars into building digital “rails” — telecommunications networks, fiber optics, and early hardware companies.
Many of these pioneers have caught fire. Cisco Systems Inc. (cisco)the poster child of the Internet infrastructure, lost nearly 85% of its value after the dot-com bubble burst… and took decades to fully recover.
But companies that user That Internet infrastructure?
They continued to control the global economy.
Amazon.com Inc. (Amzn) It has risen more than 100,000% since its early days. Alphabet Company (Google) It has risen tens of thousands of percent since the IPO.
The builders struggled. Applicants became wealthy.
And here’s the twist: many of these online winners are now spending aggressively for… Builds The next generation of technology – artificial intelligence.
Which raises a crucial question: Will today’s AI developers eventually follow the same path… while a new class of “AI implementers” quietly captures the real upside?
per day Smart moneywe’ll show you exactly how this transformation has already begun — including one under-the-radar “applier” that we’re giving you for free today…
It’s a company that’s already using AI to boost efficiency, expand profit margins, and quietly move forward – with one key metric already up more than 50% in just the last two years…
The builders built it… and the enforcers won
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, railways were more than just a means of transportation. They have been a transformative business platform. But by the early 1890s, America was overwhelmed by railroad capacity.
As a result, hundreds of railroads failed to make a profit.
More than 1,500 railroad companies entered bankruptcy or receivership during the major railroad collapses of the 1870s, 1890s, and early 1900s. One of those early losses was the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company – a giant of the 19th century railroad industry.
By 1890, P&R was ranked among the most valuable railroad companies on the New York Stock Exchange. But just three years later, it went off the rails, landing in bankruptcy court and leading to a national economic depression known as the Panic of 1893.
More than 70 railroad companies followed the P&R into bankruptcy that year—accounting for nearly 25 percent of the railroad miles in the United States at the time.
But although P&R and hundreds of other track builders wiped out their shareholders, their expanded rail transportation networks reshaped American commerce. This allowed “second movers” to reach customers nationwide using existing railway networks.
Campbell Soup Company, now Campbell Company (CPB)built its empire on the meticulous railway network that P&R had painstakingly assembled over decades.
Campbell sat squarely within the railroad geography that helped the P&R bind together. The company transported produce by rail from the Midwest to canning facilities in New Jersey, then rolled wagons of tomatoes and cream of celery soup across the country.
But nationwide rail infrastructure wasn’t just a delivery platform for Campbell. It also served as a catalyst for innovation. Since rail freight rates are mostly based on weight, the company had a high incentive to remove as much weight as possible from its cargo.
In 1897, chemist John Dorrance, who worked at Campbell’s Company, discovered how to make “condensed” soup by removing most of the water during production. This single innovation saved Campbell’s company from transporting its worthless “water weight” across the country.
As a result, it has significantly reduced the actual cost of shipping soup nationwide.
If the bars hadn’t already been there, Dorrance probably wouldn’t have bothered trying to thicken Campbell’s soup.
And thus a food empire was born. The invention of condensed soup transformed Campbell’s from a small regional food company into a distinguished national brand.
But this is the part that most investors miss…
Railroad companies didn’t disappear because their idea was wrong. They disappeared because they built too early, spent too much, and couldn’t get the value of what they created.
The real fortunes were made by the companies that came after – the ones that user bars, instead of paying for them.
And this same transformation is already starting to happen again today…
Today’s AI creators are laying the same rails
We know who the P&R companies will be: hyperscale companies building AI infrastructure — like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms Inc. (dead)and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) – which is now over-invested.
These are the same companies that once thrived as takers during the dot-com boom.
Now, they take on a completely different role. They are the ones who build the bars
The winners of the AI ​​boom will not be the builders.
They will be Applied.
These are the “second movers” – companies using AI to reduce costs, boost productivity, and expand margins within already established companies.
It doesn’t look exciting. But historically, these are where the biggest gains are made.
One of the most obvious examples is hiding in plain sight.
PayPal Holding Company (PYPL) It is a textbook application.
It is integrating AI directly into its digital payments infrastructure. It powers AI in fraud prevention, transaction approvals, customer service, loan underwriting, and even internal functions like marketing and compliance.
This is not a theory. Revenue per employee has increased by more than 50% since 2022, a clear sign that AI is already delivering real efficiency gains.
PayPal is also benefiting from the expanding role of artificial intelligence in everyday commerce. The company’s massive user base of 435 million positions it as a critical enabler of global digital commerce, much of which will be influenced by artificial intelligence in the coming years.
At a recent investor conference, CEO Enrique Lloris emphasized plans to accelerate AI-driven changes and serve customers “in new ways” — citing an expanded product portfolio.
PayPal is riding on the AI ​​infrastructure it already has in place, without risking its balance sheet to build it.
And if history is any guide…
It’s companies like these, not those laying the bars, that can reap the biggest gains.
The next wave of artificial intelligence is already here
There’s a new type of revolutionary technology entering the scene, which is what I call it “You,” Or autonomous artificial intelligence.
This isn’t just artificial intelligence that responds to prompts.
It is artificial intelligence that can act on its own – make decisions, carry out tasks, and operate autonomously.
It has the potential to reshape entire industries — and early signs suggest it’s already putting pressure on some of America’s most widely held stocks.
Some of today’s biggest market winners can quietly become tomorrow’s biggest disappointments.
Like every major technological shift, this will create winners… and losers.
Again, the biggest winners are unlikely to be those who build the technology. They will be the ones to implement it.
In other words, you don’t want P&R companies.
You want Campbell.
In my country New special broadcastI explain exactly how this transformation unfolds…
What popular stocks might be at risk?
And any lesser-known “applicants” are in a position to benefit.
And I also reveal My #1 Applied Stock to Buy Before this technology took off.
You can click here to watch it now.
It is considered,
Eric Fry
note: Eric has seen multiple technology cycles, and knows where investors go wrong. His take on “AI Appliers” offers a grounded way of thinking about this boom. If you want to see how this could impact your investment portfolio, Check out his latest free presentation while it’s still available.
