The shift toward on-device AI is sparking a major reckoning in the tech world. Perplexity's CEO recently highlighted how localized AI processing threatens the traditional data center dominance that's powered the cloud era. Here's what's really happening: as AI models get smarter and smaller, they're moving off remote servers straight onto your devices—phones, chips, everything. This changes the whole economics game. Apple and Qualcomm are in prime position to capitalize. Why? They control the silicon powering consumer hardware. When computation moves to the edge, chip makers become gatekeepers instead of cloud providers. The industry is staring down what some are calling a $10 trillion question: where does the AI compute actually happen in the next decade? Legacy data center infrastructure could face serious headwinds if this trend accelerates. The race is on between centralized cloud computing and decentralized, device-native AI. Winners and losers will reshape the entire tech stack.