Bloomberg - How the AI Boom Created the Most Valuable Monopolies in History

Senior legal analyst Daniel Hanley says Nvidia’s bundling strategy creates a “walled garden” that steers buyers to its own hardware and squeezes out competition—classic monopolist behavior.

Every time you type a question into ChatGPT, you are, probably without knowing it, making several monopolies richer.

Actually, it’s no different if you use one of ChatGPT’s many competitors. Nearly all of them use chips from Nvidia Corp., which sells around 92% of the particular components — called artificial intelligence accelerators — that make chatbots function. Nvidia relies on a trio of partners to produce its semiconductors: South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and ASML Holding NV of the Netherlands. Each supplier has a market position almost as fortified as Nvidia’s, or even more so.

In many industries, that kind of dominance might have antitrust watchdogs threatening a breakup. In technology, it’s long been accepted that important innovations can lead to companies dominating their markets and then staying on top for years by exploiting the laws of scale. It happened with mainframe and personal computers, web browsers, search engines, social networks and mobile software.

When some of those earlier monopolies ended, it was largely because rivals brought them down rather than that government regulators took them apart, Standard Oil-style. It’s possible that AI will have its “iPhone moment,” when a new invention renders companies at the top of their market obsolete almost overnight. It’s also conceivable that AI simply won’t have the world-changing economic impact that the industry promises, ending the gold rush. For now, the monopolies of artificial intelligence are taking a star turn.

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