The A.I. story is shifting from infrastructure build‑out to monetization, and Alex Bouzari, CEO of DataDirect Networks, says “tokenomics” will determine whether massive Nvidia (NVDA) GPU investments generate real EBITDA. Bouzari explains how data centers are becoming AI factories and why established enterprise players like Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP) are best positioned to win. Those that fail to integrate A.I. quickly risk being left behind as adoption accelerates.
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1:33So is this sort of the next phase then of artificial intelligence as far as how we're going to see some of these companies monetize and can you give us examples then?
3:21When are we going to start to see evidence of this then or are we already doing that?
4:41Is it in your mind going to be the next ChatGPT?
6:15I mean can some of these businesses legitimately be replicated and have their lunch eaten by AI?
Welcome back to Market on Close. I'm Sam Vardis on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Understandably, a lot of talk this week about oil, but let's circle back to another major theme in these markets that is AI. Joining us now is our next guest, Alex Bouzari, who's the co-founder and CEO of DataDirect Networks. Alex, thanks so much for your time today. Let's just talk about what we've heard from Nvidia in recent weeks and particularly out of this big conference that they held. I think there's been a lot of focus on tokconomics. Can you explain exactly what that is?
Absolutely. Well, think of tokconomics as the way to generate revenue and outcomes out of AI. So in AI you have two areas. One area is the actual models where you pre-train, post-train the models. But then what's really important, what's really relevant to organizations, enterprises and nations is how do you derive insight from AI, and tokconomics is really the way to generate revenue and generate value out of AI. So giving you a simple analogy, let's say hotel analogy, AI infrastructure is really like a hotel. You build a property, if the rooms are empty, you don't make money. In AI, GPUs are your rooms, tokens are your revenue. So tokconomics really is how full is your system and how much value does each output generate. It's the gross margin driver of the AI economy and therefore the EBITDA driver in AI.
Okay. So is this sort of the next phase then of artificial intelligence as far as how we're going to see some of these companies monetize and can you give us examples then?
Sure. So I mean we've really moved from data centers to AI factories and AI factories are systems that produce intelligence and therefore insight at scale. So as the data engine that keeps these factories running full, what DDN does is we ensure that the EBIT is making, generating revenue and value. So in financial services for instance, you can run models far faster, more efficiently with more parameters and that gives you insight and differentiation which increases the return on your investments. For banks for instance that have to stay in compliance, you can run the compliance metrics across a very broad set of parameters very, very quickly and ensure that you're not getting hit by fines. In life sciences, you're bringing a new drug to market. Bringing a new drug to market is very complex, very costly. You have the challenges of getting FDA approval. With AI, it shortens the amount of time to bring a new drug to market, make it successful, and increases the likelihood of the FDA giving you the approval the first time around. So really across all industries and use cases, AI is delivering business and financial value to organizations. We're moving from a phase of investment infrastructure buildout with GPUs from Nvidia into a phase of value creation, business and financial value creation which is really the monetization of AI which is the only thing that matters at the end of the day.
Bouzari, A. (2026, March 20). From GPUs to Profits: Alex Bouzari on AI Monetization [Interview transcript]. Schwab Network. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/780836/
MLA
Alex Bouzari. "From GPUs to Profits: Alex Bouzari on AI Monetization." Schwab Network, 20 Mar. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/780836/.
BibTeX
@misc{bouzari2026_780836,
author = {Alex Bouzari},
title = {From GPUs to Profits: Alex Bouzari on AI Monetization},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Schwab Network. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {mar},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/780836/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
