As AI models gather knowledge for companies, there remains one big loser, says Satya Nadella.
In an article published in X on Sunday, the Microsoft CEO warned of a future where a small number of AI providers capture most of the economic value and the industry loses ownership of knowledge.
“No one wants a world where every company in every sector cedes value to a few models that eat up everything in sight,” Nadella wrote. “Society has no permission for an AI future that hollows out entire industries.”
Nadella likened the age of AI to globalization and warned against repeating that dynamic.
“Think about what happened in the first phase of globalization: outsourcing hollowed out the entire industrial economy,” he wrote. “While the GDP numbers looked fine on the surface, population migration is real and its effects are still being felt.”
Instead, he advocated a broader AI ecosystem in which companies maintain control over their learning systems, enabling innovation and retaining employee expertise.
Nadella’s post echoed concerns raised by other Big Tech CEOs this year.
In the February podcast, Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said the biggest software companies are in danger of becoming mere data sources.
“The major model manufacturers want to create a world where any data from any company is easily available,” Ramaswamy said. “Everything else, the world, is just a stupid data pipe feeding into that big brain.”
Ramaswamy added that Snowflake needs to be run with “fear” that people will stop using AI agents developed by software companies and instead seek comprehensive agents with data from Snowflake and everywhere else.
Box CEO Aaron Levy said in a LinkedIn post in January that AI models can perform advanced knowledge tasks across nearly every profession, from law to strategy to scientific research.
“The question we must address is: How can companies differentiate in a world where everyone has access to the same expertise?” Levy wrote. He said context would be the answer.