About the author
Decoding Discontinuity
Decoding Discontinuity is investment research on the structural break generative AI is creating across public and private markets. Generative AI is not another technology cycle. It is a discontinuity: a break that resets competitive rules and changes where value is captured across industries. The Architectural Resilience Assessment Framework (ARAF™) provides the analytical structure for that work.
The question is where value moves. As agents take over more of the work inside a business, which companies control the coordination layer, and which lose the advantage they hold today?
Who it is for
This is not an AI news publication. It is for allocators, investors in public and private markets, and operators who need to understand where value will migrate before the market reaches consensus. The unit of analysis is the company, not the news cycle.
What a subscriber receives
A new piece arrives every Tuesday morning.
Free subscribers receive the weekly analysis and previews of the paid research.
Paid membership is $50 a month or $500 a year. It includes S-1 company teardowns in executive format and the full archive.
Institutional access runs separately from the Substack membership and is by enquiry: raphaelle@decodingdiscontinuity.com.
Where to start
What is Discontinuity?
Disruption bends the curve. Discontinuity stops it and starts a new one.
AGNT Manifesto: From Disruption to Discontinuity
Where the orchestration economics thesis opens, with the SaaSpocalypse as the evidence.
Part I — The $285 Billion “SaaSpocalypse” Is the Wrong Panic
The selloff priced the systems of record as if the labs had already won. Why the race to become the system of execution runs from both ends of the stack.
OpenAI at $730 Billion: The Clouds Are Forming
A record raise, $218 billion of projected cash burn, and the shift from a training monopoly to inference competition. The risk sits in the capital architecture, not in one company.
The framework
ARAF™, the Architectural Resilience Assessment Framework, measures orchestration potential against displacement risk. It separates companies positioned to control the coordination layer from those likely to be repriced by it: which competitive advantages endure as AI agents become autonomous actors, and which become structurally exposed.
The framework also underpins the long/short strategy being built on the same thesis: long companies whose structural advantage strengthens through the transition, short those whose existing moats erode.
About Raphaëlle d’Ornano
Raphaëlle d’Ornano is the founder and CIO of Decoding Discontinuity and the architect of the framework it is built on. The Washington Post quoted her assessment of the Fermi America IPO in November 2025.
Before Decoding Discontinuity, she spent more than a decade analysing technology-driven businesses for institutional investors and executive teams across venture capital, growth and private equity. The approach she built starts with the business model, and works down to the numbers that actually decide whether an advantage holds.
When generative AI arrived, that same approach pointed somewhere else: this was not another cycle that could be read through historical analogues. It was a discontinuity. She has been publishing on what generative AI means for investors since 2023.
Raphaëlle is a regular speaker at the Milken Institute, the Raise Summit and at private conferences.
Sections of the publication
Agentic Era Series — the long-form series on the agentic transition and what it reprices.
AGNT Manifesto — the orchestration economics thesis, developed in chapters.
Institutional Research — company teardowns and research on the infrastructure shifts and value migrations reshaping the AI economy.
AGNT Podcast — long-form conversations, in partnership with theCUBE Research.
Speaking + Interviews — talks, panels and interviews.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and are based on publicly available information. They do not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial instrument. The author may hold positions in the securities of companies mentioned. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers should conduct their own independent due diligence and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decision.
