The Trust Economy: why the next era of value runs on confidence
We bought products, then subscribed to services. Next, we’ll delegate to machines we have learned to trust.
AI agents and Physical AI are moving from advising us to acting for us. They’ll book, negotiate, drive and pay on our behalf. Capability gets a machine into the market. Trust sets how far we let it act.
Ric Vicari, Senior Vice President for Value Added Services at Cubic3, traces how value moved from products to subscriptions and is now moving to outcomes. The paper sets out what it takes to compete when trust is the limit on delegation.
What’s Inside
- How value moved from ownership to access to outcomes: the product, subscription and trust economies side by side
- Why trust becomes a key economic differentiator, and the three foundations it rests on: trust in data, in agent behaviour, and in security and resilience
- How agents, tokenisation and trusted data change what customers and business buyers pay for
- Why connectivity enables autonomy, and why energy becomes the constraint
- Why mobility is the proof point, from SAE Level 0 to Level 5
- Why regulation is trust infrastructure, and what governance scaling autonomy requires
Key Takeaways
- Trust sets the limit on delegation. Reputation looks backwards. Agents need forward-looking trust that is verifiable, machine-readable and accountable.
- Regulation is trust infrastructure. Rules that judge outcomes, not methods, are what allow agents to act.
- The economies layer. Products and subscriptions don’t disappear. Trusted outcomes sit on top of them.
- Artificial superintelligence (ASI) is coming. Built as a partner, not a replacement, it will earn its mandate one proven decision at a time.
- Flexibility is the fastest megawatt. Agents that orchestrate existing assets release power long before new plants are built.
Download the white paper to see what it takes to compete in the trust economy.
