As they scale, omniscalers can blur arena boundaries, influence investment-intensity levels, and disrupt value-chain structures. At the same time, scale alone is neither necessary nor sufficient for success in arenas. Many large companies do not scale across arenas. Meanwhile, we see new entrants continue to gain traction. Recent examples include well-funded younger AI players such as Anthropic and Perplexity; humanoid-robotics entrants such as Figure; fast-scaling EV challengers such as Zeekr (later acquired by Geely); and space players such as Rocket Lab. As escalatory investments reach new heights in arenas with omniscalers, competition isn’t quelled; it’s changing.
We analyzed nine omniscalers, though there may be more. Our so-called “omni-9” are Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Huawei, Meta, Microsoft, Samsung, and Tesla. Within this group, two operate as broader ecosystems or clusters of companies in which formally separate entities share leadership, capital, and capabilities. They are the cluster of companies founded by Elon Musk (Tesla and SpaceX, including xAI) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin, and Project Prometheus).
Read the full article here
