Every AI prompt you send consumes 0.24 watt-hours of energy, releases 0.26 milliliters of water, and generates 0.035 grams of CO2. These numbers seem microscopic—until you understand the multiplication effect that defines AI economics.
This is the fundamental insight of the Prompt as Economic Primitive framework: just as the HTTP request became the atomic unit of web commerce in the 1990s, the AI prompt is becoming the atomic unit of AI value creation in the 2020s.
The historical parallel is precise. HTTP requests enabled search engines, e-commerce, and the entire web economy. AI prompts are enabling a parallel transformation—from AI search and assistants to code generation and content creation. The difference? The resource intensity is orders of magnitude higher.
When ChatGPT processes 2.5 billion queries daily, those microscopic per-prompt costs aggregate to 850 MWh of daily electricity consumption—equivalent to powering 30,000 American homes. The carbon footprint reaches 100,000+ tons annually, matching 20,000 cars.
This creates a critical strategic question for every company building on AI: understanding the primitive means understanding the economy. Companies that harness AI profitably must master its infrastructure demands. Those that don’t will find their margins consumed by compute costs they never anticipated.
The prompt isn’t just a technical artifact—it’s the foundation of an entirely new economic system.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
