AI-Driven Dollar Dominance: A Quiet Revolution

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is quietly reinforcing US dollar dominance in global markets. AI companies, cloud providers, and payment networks are creating a system where a critical input for the global economy, compute power, is priced, paid for, and recycled into US dollar assets.

This development echoes the petrodollar template, where oil prices were linked to the US currency in the 1970s. Like the petrodollar, the AI-driven system creates a self-reinforcing cycle that links infrastructure, digital payments, and US financial markets.

One channel reinforcing dollar dominance is the supply chain for AI compute power, which is dominated by US-linked firms priced in dollars. This means global digital production would source dollar liquidity, with revenues landing inside a largely dollar-based financial system.

The invisible infrastructure forming beneath this visible layer includes payment rails and programmable settlement systems. OpenAI's partnership with Visa aims to build the infrastructure for agentic commerce, which would automate payments between AI agents and human users.