Platforms, AI, and the Economics of BigTech

Marc Andreessen calls DeepSeek AI’s Sputnik moment.

Yes, it did catch the US unprepared but that’s where the ‘space race’ analogy ends.

Today’s AI race is not merely an ‘arms race’ nor is DeepSeek easily explained away as just a Sputnik moment.

This race is playing out against the larger backdrop of more than a decade of technology infrastructure export by the largest economies around the world. – whether it is India’s export of digital public infrastructure, cloud export by the US BigTech, or China’s Digital Silk Road working alongside its Belt and Road project.

And that’s what makes this truly interesting!

This combination of tech infrastructure exports combined with leverage through complementary AI capabilities creates a new format of globalization – standards-based globalization – something that most people don’t yet fully understand.