There’s Just One AI Firm: Introducing the Blob

It all started, as many stories do, with Elon Musk. In the early 2010s, he recognized that AI was poised to become possibly the most impactful technology in history. However, he harbored serious concerns that if it fell into the hands of profit-driven powers, humanity would face dire consequences. Musk had invested early in DeepMind, a UK lab leading the charge toward artificial general intelligence. But after Google acquired DeepMind in 2014, Musk severed ties, believing it crucial to foster a counterforce motivated by human welfare rather than financial gain. This belief led to the formation of OpenAI. During my interview with Musk and Sam Altman at the company’s launch in 2015, they emphasized that shareholder profits would not influence their decision-making.

Fast-forward to today: OpenAI’s valuation has soared to half a trillion dollars, or perhaps even $750 billion, with its for-profit sector now established as a public benefit corporation. Musk, now the wealthiest person globally, operates his for-profit AI enterprise, xAI. Thus, the era of nonprofit labs paving the way is clearly over. Yet, even the most alarmed critics from a decade ago likely didn’t foresee that advanced AI would fall under the control of a single, intertwined, profit-driven colossus.

This is our reality today. Even more troubling, this interconnected web is partially financed by foreign entities and endorsed by the US government, seemingly prioritizing competition over caution. This ornate network of partnerships, mergers, funding strategies, governmental initiatives, and strategic investments ties the fates of nearly all significant players in the AI landscape together. I refer to this phenomenon as the Blob.

Blob’s Black Box

A complete exploration of the intricate ties among these entities would exceed my allotted space. Even compiling a condensed list necessitates the use of—you guessed it—AI. Yes, I turned to GPT-5 for assistance in gaining perspective. “My head is spinning,” I admitted, swallowing my ego as I requested this overconfident machine for a comprehensive enumeration of cloud agreements, investments, partnerships, and government arrangements. It took two minutes and 35 seconds for the typically swift LLM to respond. “You’re right that it’s dizzying,” the bot remarked, ever the flatterer, “It’s essentially one massive circular money-and-compute engine.” A note to GPT: You do not have the authority to write the display text for this essay. Leave the editorializing to me. Regardless, once it stopped its commentary, GPT-5 generated several thousand words along with flowcharts, arrows, and cross-references to numerous mutually beneficial arrangements, including the notable Stargate initiative linking OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Softbank, and an Abu Dhabi investment firm, all with the backing of the US government.

This week provided another pertinent example: a convoluted agreement involving Nvidia, Microsoft, and Anthropic. Microsoft’s press release encapsulated it neatly in three lines, resembling a mediocre Allen Ginsberg poem: “Anthropic to scale Claude on Azure / Anthropic to adopt NVIDIA architecture / NVIDIA and Microsoft to invest in Anthropic.” The deal exhibits characteristics of what critics label a circular arrangement, where funds circulate among companies without a single customer being involved. Microsoft is investing at least $5 billion in Anthropic—a direct competitor to Microsoft’s primary partner, OpenAI—while Anthropic has pledged to purchase $30 billion worth of computing resources from Microsoft. Simultaneously, Nvidia invests in Anthropic, which commits to developing its technology on Nvidia chips. Voilà! Nvidia deepens its involvement in its customers’ businesses. Microsoft mitigates its previous dependency on OpenAI. And Anthropic’s valuation skyrockets to $350 billion, a sharp increase from its $183 billion valuation just two months prior.

Anthropic refrained from commenting on the deal beyond a press release, directing reporters to a video featuring the three CEOs discussing the agreement. The CEOs appeared remotely; these transactions are so commonplace that it appears too trivial to announce them in person. In the video, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, positioned centrally, beams like the Cheshire cat as he hints at what might serve as the Blob’s motto: “We are increasingly going to be customers of each other.” As he details the specifics, the others nod in agreement. On the left sits Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Lacking its own cloud or alternate non-AI revenue sources like Google, Microsoft, or Meta, Anthropic has now added Microsoft to its former stock-for-compute partnerships with Amazon and Google—a stunning trifecta!

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, clad in his trademark leather jacket, brands the deal as “a dream come true,” elaborating that he has long had his sights set on Anthropic and is excited to include the company in his expanding portfolio. “We’re present in every enterprise in every single country,” he declares. “Now this collaboration among the three of us will enable AI, and Claude, to reach every enterprise and every industry throughout the globe.”