THE TAXONOMY OF AI PLAYERS by Professor Babu George

The AI Power Matrix — Quarries, Wellsprings, Deltas & Driftwood

The AI power matrix

A framework for mapping who holds real power in the AI era, and the strategic plays between positions.

Y axis: Scarcity

Could someone else provide what you provide? Scarce positions are hard to replicate or route around.

X axis: Ecosystem gravity

Has the industry organized itself around you in ways that are painful to undo?

Scarcity of what you control
High scarcity Low scarcity
Low gravity High gravity
Wellsprings
Scarce output, ecosystem not yet locked in
Anthropic Mistral DeepSeek
Quarries
Own the bedrock, ecosystem built on you
NVIDIA Google OpenAI
Driftwood
Carried by currents you don't control
AI wrappers Bolt-on SaaS
Deltas
Commodity offer, but everything flows through you
Microsoft AWS Apple
Ecosystem gravity
Strategic plays
Click a company or strategic play
Each player's position reveals both its power and its vulnerability. The strategic plays describe how companies migrate between quadrants.

A thinking tool, not a finished map. Positions shift as capability costs fall, open-weight models improve, and new bottlenecks emerge. The question to ask of any AI company: what do you have that's both scarce and sticky?

Conceived and developed by Professor Babu George · linkedin.com/in/beingbabu

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