HOW AI COULD REINFORCE DOLLAR DOMINANCE / PROJECT SYNDICATE

How AI Could Reinforce Dollar Dominance

While policymakers and economists debate the future of dollar dominance, AI companies, cloud providers, and payment networks might already be writing it into the next chapter of international monetary history. Those who hope to shape that chapter must act now—or risk being left off the page.

Chenxu Fu and Xianguo Huang

SINGAPORE—The signing of a 20-year data-center lease probably does not register as a monetary event. 

Even the announcement of a dollar-pegged stablecoin linked to the AI boom would not necessarily be given this label. 

But such developments are proliferating—and contributing to the formation of a system in which a critical input for the global economy is priced, paid for, and ultimately recycled into dollar assets.

This is not a new concept. 

Since the 1970s, the pricing of oil in US dollars has increased global demand for the currency and generated export revenues for oil producers, which often directed them toward US markets. 

But the petrodollar is a template, not a prophecy. 

It shows that when production, payments, and asset-recycling reinforce one another, an indispensable input can embed a currency in global markets.

AI might generate its own version of this dynamic. 

Discussions about who will “win” in the AI economy often focus on the race to build the most advanced models. 

But the true transformation begins when model performance converges, and companies integrate AI into everyday operations. 

At that point, just as we talk about dollars per barrel today, we may find ourselves considering dollars per unit of compute.

Energy underlies this metric. 

AI is far from weightless. 

Data centers convert electricity into billable computing capacity, which is now being secured years in advance. 

When Anthropic signs a 20-year lease with TeraWulf, an infrastructure provider, it looks a lot like an industrial firm securing long-term production capacity. 

This is a supply-side wager that demand for compute will persist.

The demand side may well reward that bet. 

To be sure, though many firms are experimenting with AI, few have reengineered their operations around it. 

But OpenAI’s new consulting arm Deployment Company (DeployCo) aims to change this by embedding engineers within companies to integrate AI into their workflows. 

Once such systems are in place, compute will become a recurring operating expense.

This brings us to the first channel that will reinforce dollar dominance. 

If the AI supply chain is dominated by US-linked firms and priced in dollars, global digital production will have to source dollar liquidity, and the revenues will land inside a largely dollar-based financial system. 

Unlike oil revenues, these proceeds would not accumulate abroad before being recycled into US markets.

But the invoice is only the visible layer. 

Beneath it, invisible infrastructure is forming: the payment rail on which agentic commerce will increasingly run. 

OpenAI’s partnership with Visa, which aims to build this infrastructure, points to a more programmable future. 

Should AI agents begin procuring services, arranging logistics, and reordering inventory with minimal human intervention, payments must be automated and machine-native.

This is the second channel that will reinforce dollar dominance. 

Dollar-pegged stablecoins, in particular, could provide the programmable settlement that agentic commerce requires. 

The announcement of Open USD—a dollar-pegged stablecoin with the backing of more than 140 payment, financial, and crypto firms—signals that dollar tokens are already being positioned for this transformation.

The two channels could eventually merge. 

The same rail that enables programmatic settlement of agentic commerce through dollar-pegged stablecoins could facilitate compute payments as easily as any other. 

Dollar invoicing would thus be combined with stablecoin settlement, turning technological dependence into monetary dependence.

In principle, tokenized deposits or central bank digital currencies could do the same job as dollar-pegged stablecoins. 

But payment systems reward early network effects. 

The question is not whether dollar stablecoins are the only option, but whether they become the first to work efficiently across borders at scale.

This infrastructure also recycles, as demand for programmable dollars is translated into demand for the safe assets that back them—notably, US Treasuries. 

Agentic commerce has barely gotten off the ground, and already stablecoin issuers rank among the largest buyers of Treasury bills.

Collectively, these developments point to the possible emergence of an energy-compute dollar loop. 

Electricity powers data centers; data centers produce compute; compute enables the automation of business activity, including payments that favor programmable settlement; and stablecoin reserves flow into US Treasuries. 

The result would be a self-reinforcing cycle linking AI infrastructure, digital payments, and US financial markets.

Remarkably, no government appears to be orchestrating this process. 

Whereas the petrodollar was built on official agreements, its AI-based successor is being constructed largely through commercial decisions. 

Cloud providers secure land and power. 

AI firms package models into services. 

Payment groups construct stablecoin rails. 

Stablecoin issuers purchase Treasuries. 

Each step is logical on its own; together, they quietly reinforce dollar dominance.

This has important implications for policymakers outside the United States—particularly in countries that have spent years trying to reduce their dependence on the dollar. 

The ASEAN+3 countries, for example, have sought to settle trade in local currencies, link national payment systems, and pool reserves to protect against dollar shortages.

While the ASEAN+3 cannot prevent the self-reinforcing dollar loop from forming, they can limit their dependence on it. 

The key will be to combine energy, AI, and payments into a single strategic agenda. 

Regional data centers, powered by affordable and increasingly clean energy, could increase local firms’ access to compute. 

And the development of local-currency tokenized settlement for agentic commerce would reduce dependence on dollar systems and keep transactions visible to regulators.

The goal for other countries is not full technological self-sufficiency, which is probably not possible any time soon. 

Rather, it is to participate in digital production without accepting a new layer of dollar dependence as the price of entry. 

After all, unlike petrodollar arrangements, the emerging AI system offers countries no seat at any summit table.

While policymakers and economists debate the future of dollar dominance, AI companies, cloud providers, and payment networks might already be writing it into the next chapter of international monetary history. 

Those who hope to shape that chapter must act now—or risk being left off the page.

Chenxu Fu is an economist at the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO).

Xianguo Huang is Senior Economist at the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO).