In advanced capitalism, platforms have assumed a function that goes far beyond technological intermediation. They operate as essential economic infrastructures, through which informational, financial and decision making flows pass, structuring entire markets. This transformation is not episodic, but systemic. Like railway networks in the nineteenth century or major utilities in the twentieth century, digital platforms today define the material and cognitive conditions of possibility for economic activity. Power no longer concentrates primarily in the ownership of traditional means of production, but in the control of the architectures that make markets themselves operational.

Platforms act as total operating environments. Through artificial intelligence systems they classify, order and render visible goods, services and economic actors. They do not merely facilitate the meeting of supply and demand, but actively shape it, establishing priorities, access thresholds and relevance criteria. In this sense, they become cognitive as well as economic infrastructures. Competition no longer takes place in a neutral space, but within rules embedded in algorithmic systems that govern visibility, reputation and performance. Market logic progressively gives way to a designed order that is opaque and difficult to contest.

This configuration produces a deep vertical integration of decision making processes. Large platforms incorporate functions that were previously distributed among a multiplicity of actors: demand forecasting, dynamic price setting, logistics management, attention allocation and performance evaluation. According to data from the European Commission, in some digital sectors more than 60 percent of relevant operational decisions are mediated by proprietary algorithmic systems of dominant platforms. Economic decision making is thus progressively removed from peripheral operators and reabsorbed into the infrastructural center, redefining the boundaries between firm and market.

For many firms, especially small and medium sized ones, this integration translates into structural dependence. Operating outside platforms becomes increasingly costly in terms of access to customers, data and distribution channels. Operating within them implies accepting contractual and operational conditions that are often unilateral and subject to non negotiable changes. Bargaining power shifts asymmetrically, transforming access to infrastructure into a lever of economic governance. This is not a classic monopoly, but a functional dependence that drastically reduces the field of strategic alternatives.

Infrastructural concentration directly affects market plurality. When a few platforms coordinate demand, supply and information on a global scale, the diversity of organizational models tends to compress. Innovation does not disappear, but is channeled along trajectories compatible with platform architecture. OECD analyses show that, in markets dominated by large digital ecosystems, new entrepreneurial initiatives tend to orient themselves toward incremental or complementary models rather than radical disruptions. Originality survives only if it is integrable; otherwise it is marginalized or absorbed.

This dynamic recalls Karl Polanyi’s reflections on the disembedding of the economy. If in the twentieth century the market tended to separate from social structures, today an inverse but symmetrical movement can be observed. The economy is re embedded within private technical systems that govern its functioning from within. Platforms assume institutional traits, defining rules, sanctions and access criteria without passing through traditional mechanisms of democratic legitimation. Reports by the World Economic Forum highlight how such actors exercise de facto regulatory power, often more incisive than that of public institutions in areas such as digital labor, electronic commerce and informational flows.

For the business world, platform dominance poses a question of strategic governance. The use of external infrastructures enables scalability and rapid access to global markets, but reduces control over long term trajectories. Firms risk transforming themselves into efficient executors within ecosystems designed by others, with limited margins of decision making autonomy. Leadership no longer consists solely in optimizing operations, but in consciously managing infrastructural dependencies, assessing the strategic costs of technological subordination.

At the systemic level, concentration on a few infrastructural pillars generates fragility. Algorithmic errors, embedded biases or opaque choices can propagate rapidly along highly integrated value chains. According to the World Bank, the growing interdependence of digital platforms increases allocative efficiency in the short term, but raises exposure to systemic shocks in the long term. The reduction of decision making plurality limits the capacity for diffuse experimentation, a crucial element for the adaptation of complex economies.

The reorganization of capitalism around platforms does not represent an inevitable outcome, but a recognizable historical trajectory. Understanding it means recognizing that economic power has shifted from markets to the infrastructures that make them possible. For firms and institutions, what is at stake is the ability to preserve spaces of autonomy, plurality and responsibility within an economy increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence systems. In this context, conflict does not disappear, but is relocated between those who design market architectures and those who operate within them, outlining a new geography of global economic power.

Global AI Observatory