I spent six months mapping who actually profits from AI - and the class architecture I found is the most elegant wealth extraction system ever designed - Silicon Canals

"I mean a structured system in which different tiers of economic actors are positioned - by design, not by accident - to either extract value or have value extracted from them. And what I found in the AI economy is not a bug. It's not an unintended consequence. It's the product itself."

"Layer one: the infrastructure lords. Nvidia, TSMC, the hyperscale cloud providers - AWS, Azure, Google Cloud. These are the landlords of the AI economy. Every single AI application, from a chatbot to an autonomous vehicle, pays rent to this layer. Nvidia's data center revenue hit $35 billion in a single quarter in late 2024."

A detailed analysis of AI spending patterns reveals a five-tier hierarchical structure in the AI economy that functions as a sophisticated wealth extraction architecture. By tracking actual invoices and spending rather than valuations and hype, the analysis identifies infrastructure providers (Nvidia, TSMC, hyperscale cloud providers) as the top tier that extracts value from every AI application through mandatory infrastructure costs. This system is not accidental but deliberately designed, creating distinct economic tiers where different actors either extract or have value extracted from them. The structure resembles feudalism more than traditional market competition, with infrastructure lords controlling the foundational layer upon which all AI applications depend.

Read at Silicon Canals