EXPONENTIALS
The data behind accelerating change
Humans think linearly, but technology advances exponentially. These charts track the trends that underpin the Singularity thesis — from compute and AI to biology, energy, and data. Most of these curves have held for decades and show no sign of slowing.
1026
FLOP (2025)
5T
Parameters
336B
Transistors
$200
Genome Cost
MOORES
RAY KURZWEILMoore's Law
Transistors per microprocessor doubling approximately every 2 years
TAKEAWAY: Hardware capability keeps compounding over multiple architecture eras.
RANGE: 1971-2026UNIT: Transistors per chipSOURCE: Kurzweil trend datasets, public model/system disclosuresUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
PRICE-PERF
RAY KURZWEILPrice-Performance
Calculations per second per $1,000 - exponential improvement over decades
TAKEAWAY: The same budget purchases radically more compute every decade.
RANGE: 1956-2050UNIT: MFLOPS per $1,000SOURCE: Kurzweil trend datasets, public model/system disclosuresUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
GENOME
RAY KURZWEILGenome Sequencing Cost
Cost to sequence a human genome falling faster than Moore's Law
TAKEAWAY: Biotech cost curves are approaching software-like economics.
RANGE: 2001-2030UNIT: USD per genomeSOURCE: NIH historical sequencing cost trend + projectionsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
SOLAR
RAY KURZWEILSolar Power Cost
Cost per watt of solar photovoltaic panels - exponential decline
TAKEAWAY: Energy abundance is increasingly driven by relentless cost compression.
RANGE: 1976-2030UNIT: USD per wattSOURCE: Historical PV module pricing + projectionsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
STORAGE
RAY KURZWEILStorage Cost
Cost per gigabyte of digital storage - dramatic decline over decades
TAKEAWAY: Cheap memory makes richer models and data-heavy products economically viable.
RANGE: 1980-2032UNIT: USD per GBSOURCE: Storage industry historical pricing + projectionsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
WIRELESS
RAY KURZWEILWireless Data Rates
Peak mobile network speeds from 2G to 6G
TAKEAWAY: Network throughput improvements unlock continuously richer AI interfaces.
RANGE: 1991-2032UNIT: Mbps/GbpsSOURCE: Mobile network standard peak throughput dataUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
DATA
RAY KURZWEILGlobal Data Created
Zettabytes of data created per year - exponential growth
TAKEAWAY: Model training supply keeps rising as digital exhaust compounds.
RANGE: 2010-2030UNIT: Zettabytes/yearSOURCE: IDC-style global data creation trend + projectionsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
ROBOTS
RAY KURZWEILIndustrial Robot Population
Millions of operational industrial robots worldwide
TAKEAWAY: Automation capacity is expanding alongside AI capabilities.
RANGE: 2000-2030UNIT: Millions of robotsSOURCE: IFR-style installed robot base trend + projectionsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
SINGULARITY
RAY KURZWEILCountdown to Singularity
Kurzweil's chart showing accelerating paradigm shifts throughout history
TAKEAWAY: Major civilizational transitions arrive at progressively shorter intervals.
RANGE: 10B years ago to 2045UNIT: Years between paradigm shiftsSOURCE: Kurzweil milestone framingUPDATED: 2026-02-06
Information
Industrial
Communication
Digital
Internet
AI
COMPUTE
Training Compute (FLOP)
Exponential growth in computational resources used to train AI models
TAKEAWAY: Frontier training runs keep scaling despite rising absolute cost.
RANGE: 2012-2028UNIT: FLOP per training runSOURCE: Kurzweil trend datasets, public model/system disclosuresUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
PARAMS
Model Parameters (Billions)
The number of learnable parameters in frontier models
TAKEAWAY: Model capacity continues climbing, with inference efficiency improving in parallel.
RANGE: 2012-2028UNIT: Billions of parametersSOURCE: Kurzweil trend datasets, public model/system disclosuresUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
INFERENCE
Inference Cost
Cost per million tokens for frontier model APIs - dramatic decline
TAKEAWAY: Cheaper inference expands viable use cases faster than capability alone.
RANGE: 2020-2027UNIT: USD per 1M tokensSOURCE: Public API pricing snapshots + projectionsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
GPU
GPU Performance
NVIDIA data center GPU TFLOPS (FP16) - exponential scaling
TAKEAWAY: Hardware throughput gains are a key multiplier on model progress.
RANGE: 2016-2028UNIT: Peak TFLOPS (FP16/BF16)SOURCE: NVIDIA data center GPU disclosures + projectionsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
LINEAR SCALE
LOG SCALE
BENCHMARK
Benchmark Performance
AI performance on standard reasoning and capability benchmarks
TAKEAWAY: Frontier systems are converging toward or beyond human baselines on many tasks.
RANGE: 2018-2027UNIT: Composite benchmark score (%)SOURCE: Benchmark aggregation from model reportsUPDATED: 2026-02-06
HISTORICAL DATA
PROJECTED
FUTURE ZONE
"
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An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense 'intuitive linear' view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.RAY KURZWEILTHE SINGULARITY IS NEAR (2005)