What PPPs will look like in 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 years

In 1666 the King of France approved a canal across the south of the country. The King paid about 40% of the cost, the local province paid about 40%, and a businessman named Pierre-Paul Riquet paid the other 20%. In return, Riquet and his family got to own the canal and collect its tolls. The Canal du Midi opened in 1681, the French government bought it back from his family in 1897, and boats still use it today.

A public-private partnership, or PPP, works in much the same way today. A government and a private company share the cost of building something, the company earns money from it for many years, and then it goes back to the government. A 40-year PPP signed in 2026 will still be running in 2066, so the people signing deals today are already shaping the future described below. The first sections build on changes we can already see, and the later ones look further ahead.

Three technologies will drive almost all of this change. AI is software that can read, write and make decisions. Robots are machines that do physical work. Tokenization splits ownership of a project into small digital shares, called tokens, that people can buy and sell online. Each one matters on its own, and together they change who can build, who does the work and who gets to own the result.

In 5 years (2031): AI does the paperwork and robots start small

Today a PPP takes years of studies, reports and paperwork. That is about to change. The cost of using AI at the same level of quality fell between 9 and 900 times a year in the three years to March 2025. Singapore’s CORENET X system has combined many building approval steps into 3 main ones, and Jordan had moved 85.8% of its government services online by mid-2026.

By 2031 AI will write the first draft of most project studies and bid documents, and it will help officials read and compare every bid. Work that takes a year today will take weeks. Because deals will cost less to prepare, much smaller projects will become worth doing, such as one water network, one solar-powered clinic or one car park. Startups will be able to propose their own projects to governments, alongside the biggest developers.

Robots will start on the jobs that are simplest or most dangerous. Drones will map land and check bridges, machines will crawl through pipes to find leaks, and robots will handle repetitive work on building sites. Each job they take over will teach them to do the next one, and the cost of building will begin to fall.

Getting paid will get simpler too. Sensors will show that a road is open or a plant is running, and the government will pay the company automatically. Investing will open up as well. The Block reported that US government bonds sold as digital tokens reached $15.86 billion in September 2026, up 75% since the end of 2025. The same technology will start letting people buy small pieces of infrastructure projects, so a road or a power plant can raise money from thousands of small investors as well as a few big banks.

In 10 years (2036): deals learn to change

A 30-year deal depends on guesses about the future, and those guesses are often wrong. Experts expected solar costs to fall 2.6% a year between 2010 and 2020, and they actually fell 15% a year. Self-driving cars could also change how much traffic a toll road gets. WeRide and Uber already run fully driverless taxis in Abu Dhabi, and Waymo’s driverless cars had covered 271.3 million miles by June 2026.

New PPPs in 2036 will include set dates to review the deal and update it. Flood planning for London already works this way. The Thames Estuary 2100 plan is reviewed every 5 years and updated every 10, and its 2023 update moved one deadline for raising flood defenses from 2065 to 2050. With the same approach, a toll road could become a route for self-driving trucks without years of arguments over the contract.

AI will make this possible. It will read a project’s data every day, spot when the world has moved away from the plan, and suggest a fair update to the deal for both sides to approve.

More changes will be well underway. Robots and parts made in factories will do much of the building, working through the night and in heat that is dangerous for people, so projects will finish faster and cost less. Data centers will become a normal type of PPP, like roads and water, because a giant one-gigawatt data center takes about 2.1 years and about $38 billion to build, and it needs power, water and land that governments control.

Selling tokens will also become a normal way to pay for a project, alongside bank loans. Today, money put into a road can be stuck there for decades. An investor who holds tokens will be able to sell them to someone else at any time, which should draw far more money into infrastructure.

PPPs will also need to win back public trust. In 2018 the UK’s government auditor reported that the country’s main PPP programs had added billions of pounds in extra costs with no clear benefit, and later that year the UK stopped using them for new projects. In the future, people will be able to see a project’s costs, performance and profits online at any time, and companies will have to agree to that before they sign.

In 20 years (2046): AI and robots run things, and people own tokens

A 40-year PPP signed this year will be halfway through in 2046. By then AI will run most projects day to day, managing traffic, water pressure and power. Robots will do most of the checking and repairs, fixing a leak or a cracked road before anyone notices it, and a small team of people will watch over them. Projects will also return to governments in better shape. When the deal for Hong Kong’s Cross-Harbour Tunnel ended after 30 years in 1999, the government got the tunnel. A government getting a project back in 2046 will also get an exact digital copy of it, with the full history of every part.

Projects will also find new ways to make money. Hong Kong’s metro company, MTR, shows how. In 2025 its Hong Kong train services lost HK$254 million before interest and tax, while developing property earned it HK$11.1 billion after tax. Ichizo Kobayashi was building homes around train stations in Japan more than 100 years ago. By 2046 many PPPs will earn money from land, energy and data along their route, and many will pay for themselves with little government money.

More people will own these projects too. Tokens of roads, ports and power plants will trade online much like company shares do today. You will be able to buy a token of your local water network on your phone, receive your share of its income automatically and vote on what it builds next. The gap between public and private will shrink once the public owns part of what it uses. Teams of companies will also stay together from one project to the next, taking what they learned with them.

In 50 years (2076): the partnership outlasts the deal

By 2076 the end date of a deal will matter much less. A water pipeline can last 50 to 100 years, while the plants that clean the water get replaced many times. So the partnership will stay in place for as long as the pipeline lasts, and different companies and new technology will come in for shorter periods.

AI and robots will make this practical. AI will spot what a city needs years before people start to complain, then suggest projects and compare the companies that could deliver them. Robots will rebuild a road or a pipeline piece by piece while it stays in use, so a project can keep getting newer for as long as people need it.

Some governments already plan this far ahead. Singapore plans its land and infrastructure 50 years out and reviews the plan every 10 years. Dutch law requires the government to update its flood and water plan every year, with a special fund of about €1.25 billion a year. Wales passed a law in 2015 that gives public bodies goals to work toward for future generations.

The money will last longer too. Alaska has been putting at least a quarter of its oil royalty money into a savings fund since 1976 and has paid residents a yearly check since 1982. For centuries, the Islamic waqf, a charity set up to last forever, paid for public goods such as water, schools and hospitals. PPPs will use both ideas. Citizen savings funds will hold tokens in the country’s projects, and families will pass tokens down from parents to children. Someone born in 2050 will get income from projects their grandparents helped pay for. A solar project in Sakaka, Saudi Arabia, drew a bid as low as 1.79 US cents per unit of electricity back in 2017, and as power keeps getting cheaper, governments will be able to give every home some water and power for free.

In 100 years (2126): partnerships renew themselves

History gives us two examples of very long deals. The Suez Canal deal was meant to last 99 years from the canal’s opening in 1869, and Egypt took control of the company in 1956, after 87 years. Japan’s Ise Grand Shrine shows a different path. It has been rebuilt on a 20-year cycle since about the year 692. The 62nd rebuild finished in 2013, the next is due in 2033, and each rebuild passes building skills on to the next generation.

PPPs in 2126 will look more like Ise, and all three technologies will be the reason. AI will write and update most deals, working out the details within limits set by citizens, and it will remember everything each project has ever learned. At Ise, older builders teach younger ones by hand. In 2126 AI and robots will carry those skills forward, and robots will do nearly all the physical work of building, running and rebuilding.

Tokens will change who a long deal answers to. Suez ended when Egypt took control from a company owned far away. A project owned by millions of the people who use it gives a government much less reason to take it. Token records will also outlast any single company, and someone in 2126 could hold tokens in a water network first bought by a great-great-grandparent. People will spend their time deciding what is worth building and who it should serve.

The same kind of deal will reach beyond Earth. Robots will build first on the Moon and Mars, AI will run those projects from far away, and tokens will let people on Earth own a share of them. The first contracts for services on the Moon are being written now.

People in 2126 may no longer use the word PPP, just as few people on the Canal du Midi today think about Riquet’s deal with the King. They will still drink water from pipelines planned in this decade, such as the Aqaba-Amman water project. They will judge today’s deal makers by whether a child born that year grows up with clean water, power, education and healthcare.

Where this starts

All of this begins with deals that people sign soon. Jordan has $86 billion of PPP and infrastructure projects, including $46 billion in Aqaba, and its PPP Law lets private companies propose projects directly. www.JordanPPP.com offers 96 organization guides and 23 sector guides for free, including how to prepare your organization for the future. Submit your interest at www.JordanPPP.com.