Big Tech bets on owning the whole AI stack, from chips to robots (opens the source in a new tab)
- An FT column argues the AI race is now a contest of vertical integration: Alphabet calls itself full stack, SpaceX runs data centres and is building a chip plant, Amazon is pursuing its own frontier model and Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face.
- The least integrated look most exposed: labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI, and Neocloud A newer cloud company, such as CoreWeave or Nscale, that rents out AI chips, often funded with debt. like CoreWeave, must accept bigger rivals' terms. Anthropic, seeking a $1.5tn IPO Initial public offering: when a company first sells its shares on a stock exchange. valuation and a raise of up to $100bn, wants to own more data centres too.
- Yet history cuts both ways: integrated giants often dominate a technology's dawn and later lose to open rivals, as IBM did in PCs, and their size draws regulators.
- $1.5tn
- Anthropic's IPO valuation target
- $100bn
- Most its IPO could raise
Why it matters If owning chips, power and models decides the winner, AI ends up in very few hands, and backers of stand-alone labs and compute renters carry the most risk when money gets tighter.
Other side Going vertical also means giants that once kept to their own lanes now compete head-on in the costliest race yet. Specialists that partner well may move faster, as open PCs did against IBM.