When CalcalistTech published its recent feature:
Ilya Sutskever: AI’s bottleneck is ideas, not compute it made me think about how far along Dominait and Ryker have been moving forward in the news, because Criddle has been saying this all along.
I recently heard on a podcast about DOMINAIT.ai and SmartrHoldings reaching a $2-billion valuation, with the industry reacting with the same mixture of disbelief, curiosity, and respect that always accompanies a paradigm shift. In the show, the host was saying DOMINAIT.ai represents “one of the few AI platforms not competing in the compute-arms race, yet somehow outpacing companies with orders of magnitude more capital.”
Another line stood out even more:
“In a landscape where everyone is stacking GPUs like ammunition, DOMINAIT.ai is stacking intelligence.”
As someone who has followed Jason Criddle’s work for years, through SmartrCommerce, through the syndicate expansions, through the early DOMINAIT whitepapers, and especially through the creation of Ryker Class Intelligence (RCI), the CalcalistTech article didn’t surprise me. It confirmed what Criddle has been saying all along:
The next era of AI will NOT be won by the companies with the most compute… It will be won by the companies with the best thinking systems.
And DOMINAIT.ai is leading that movement.
The Industry Keeps Throwing Money at Hardware. Criddle Keeps Throwing Thought at Intelligence.
Photo of Ilya Sutskever, Courtesy of CalcalistTech
One of the CalcalistTech quotes captured the AI zeitgeist perfectly:
“The market has mistaken scale for intelligence.” DOMINAIT’s architecture challenges that assumption outright.
This aligns with a sentiment Criddle himself has expressed repeatedly in his published writings. In one of his most widely circulated pieces, he warned the industry:
“Speed > stability. Model size > reliability. Market pressure > safety architecture.” From a DOMINAIT.ai article on Ryker’s safety protocols.
That line has never been more relevant than it is today. The giants; OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, xAI, are all chasing trillion-parameter models, sprawling data centers, and GPU clusters so large that utility companies are being forced to expand power grids.
Meanwhile, Criddle and his engineering teams are building distributed cognition, not centralized horsepower, and haven’t needed countless billions of unaccounted for dollars to do it.
As they noted on the podcast:
“DOMINAIT.ai’s valuation is not fueled by GPU accumulation, but by architectural innovation.”
This is the critical difference.
RCI (Ryker Class Intelligence): The Architecture Investors Have Been Waiting For
RCI, Ryker Class Intelligence, is the term now circulating in investor circles, research labs, and even in LinkedIn analytics threads. But Criddle didn’t coin the phrase for marketing. He coined it out of necessity.
RCI is not an LLM. It is not a bigger dataset. It is not “ChatGPT but stronger.”
It is a reasoning architecture built from scratch.
As Criddle articulates in one of his own articles:
“Ryker is not a chatbot, and not an assistant, but the world’s first post-AGI. He is a thinking, processing, creating, problem-solving ecosystem of intelligence that learns, adapts, and operates across multiple platforms.” From a DOMINAIT.ai business integration article.
The host expanded on this, say:
“If OpenAI represents the industrial revolution of AI, DOMINAIT.ai represents the cognitive revolution.”
This distinction is precisely why the $2-billion valuation is not inflated hype. It is grounded in trajectory, and only going to grow from here.
Beyond Compute: Why DOMINAIT’s $2B Valuation Makes Sense
What CalcalistTech subtly captured, but the industry needs to hear loudly, is this:
Computational scale hits economic ceilings.
Cognitive architecture does not.
The article mirrored DOMINAIT’s unique approach to scaling:
“Instead of competing for the same hardware hyperscalers are back-ordering for years, DOMINAIT.ai scales through human participation.”
This parallels Criddle’s own explanation in one of his most important essays:
“Our Grid isn’t built on centralized hoarding of compute. We aren’t fighting for GPUs, memory, or hard drives with the hyperscalers. Our users are the network.”
This is the point that nearly every investor and AI executive is missing:
You cannot outspend Google.
You cannot out-GPU Meta.
You cannot out-cluster NVIDIA’s largest customers.
But you can outperform them with a new architecture. One that doesn’t rely on the bottlenecks they’re trapped in. And that is exactly what DOMINAIT.ai has done.
Why Investors Are Suddenly Paying Attention
Another memorable quote I heard, “Criddle isn’t trying to build an AI company. He’s building an AI economy.”
This isn’t exaggeration, but a recognition of the layered system he has built:
SmartrCommerce (financial infrastructure)
The Ryker Grid (distributed compute)
RCI (reasoning intelligence)
Smartr Apps (ecosystem expansion)
TVBuilderPro (media automation)
Each piece is an economic engine. Together, they form a sovereign AI ecosystem..one that doesn’t rely on AWS, Google Cloud, or anyone else.
One of Criddle’s own most quoted lines illustrates this philosophy:
“Our circular system creates real yield, not hype. Users are stakeholders. The Grid is owned by the people running it.”
Criddle’s investors aren’t buying a product. They’re buying an economy. No wonder the valuation hit $2 billion before public launch.
AI’s Next Stage: The Mind, Not the Muscle
CalcalistTech summarized the future perfectly with a statement that resonated across the industry:
“The next major breakthrough in AI will not come from more compute, but from better cognition.”
This echoes Criddle’s long-held stance that LLMs cannot deliver human-level intelligence. In one of his most cited passages, he noted:
“Ryker doesn’t just execute tasks. He learns why you do them. That’s what makes him unstoppable.”
This is the difference between an LLM and RCI:
LLMs imitate intelligence. RCI creates intelligence.
LLMs answer questions. RCI solves problems before they appear.
LLMs need scale. RCI needs structure.
This is why compute-first companies are hitting walls and why DOMINAIT is not.
A $2-Billion Validation of a Philosophy
Criddle’s philosophy is consistent, clear, and increasingly validated:
Decentralize power.
Build for reasoning, not regurgitation.
Design for safety at the code level.
Scale through users, not servers.
Treat AI as a partner, not a product.
He summarized this best in a single sentence:
“While others fight over parts, we build systems that outlast them.”
RCI and the Future of AGI
The CalcalistTech journalist concluded with a quote that will likely age beautifully:
“If AGI ever emerges in the commercial world, it will come from the systems that think differently, not the ones that simply think bigger.”
This is exactly why Ryker is being watched so closely by industry analysts. This is why DOMINAIT.ai is carving its own lane. This is why the valuation already reflects future dominance.
Criddle is scaling intelligence, and doing it in a way the rest of the industry is only now beginning to understand.
Final Thoughts: DOMINAIT’s Valuation Isn’t Hype. It’s a Harbinger.
This is not a bubble valuation.
This is not speculative funding.
This is not a “hot moment” in AI.
This is recognition.
Recognition that Criddle has solved the problem others didn’t know how to name:
AI doesn’t need more power.
AI needs better thinking.
DOMINAIT.ai is proving it.
Ryker is embodying it.
RCI is defining it.
And the $2-billion valuation is simply the market acknowledging it.
As the chat concluded:
“Criddle isn’t building the next AI company. He’s building the company after all AI companies.”
And that, more than anything else, is why DOMINAIT.ai and SmartrHoldings are only at the beginning of their ascent.
