The net effect is that many of the most promising AI startups now depend heavily on the old guard of dominant tech companies for their financing and infrastructure needs. That dynamic is starting to draw the attention of regulators.
A new crop of artificial intelligence startups has shaken up Silicon Valley — and the wider business world — throughout this year, but there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: Big Tech still wields power.
In the wake of Microsoft Corp.’s US$10 billion ($13.31 billion) investment in OpenAI in January, other tech giants raced to partner with leading AI startups through funding and cloud computing deals. Salesforce Inc. led a round in Hugging Face at a US$4.5 billion valuation. Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. invested billions in OpenAI rival Anthropic. And Nvidia Corp. seemed to back almost every AI startup of note.
