Price of digital participation

A small number of firms now control the digital infrastructure that underpins modern life. Cloud computing, AI models, and data networks increasingly run through the same few providers. Most organisations, from start-ups to governments, depend on them.

This is the new phase of platform capitalism: consolidation after diffusion. The early internet was open and fragmented. Anyone could build, distribute, and scale. Now, scale itself depends on access to the infrastructure owned by a few firms. The capital costs, technical barriers, and regulatory compliance needed to compete have risen beyond reach for most entrants.

The consequences are far-reaching. These platforms now set the pace of innovation, the price of digital participation, and the standards for data and security. Their priorities shape what smaller firms can build and how fast they can move. Even large enterprises find their strategic freedom narrowing. Vendor choice becomes dependency. Whole sectors, from finance to healthcare, are aligning their models around the capabilities and constraints of these core systems.

Governments are starting to react through antitrust cases, data sovereignty rules, and investment in public infrastructure. But regulation is slow and uneven, while technological centralisation moves quickly. AI is amplifying the effect: foundation models require compute power and data resources that only the largest platforms can provide, deepening dependence at the moment innovation should be diversifying.

Platform consolidation isn’t immediately visible on a day-to-day basis. Most users experience better performance and seamless integration. Yet beneath that ease sits a structural risk: fragility through concentration. A few choke points now hold global digital infrastructure together, and with it, the global economy.