The Architectural Assumption That's Costing AI Founders Quadratic Growth

You're nine days out from Forbes Under 30 Summit 2026 in Phoenix. You know your unit economics. You can answer the "what happens when a bigger player copies you" question without flinching. But there's a question nobody in that room is going to ask you - and it's the one that will determine whether your AI infrastructure compounds or just accumulates. Your intelligence - the thing your system actually produces when two signals meet, when a clinical outcome informs a routing decision, when a user behavior pattern reaches an agent that can act on it.