{"id":1506,"date":"2026-04-02T15:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T07:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2026-05-12T13:51:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T05:51:19","slug":"jm-review-when-ai-giants-grow-like-sequoias-everything-else-withers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/archives\/1506","title":{"rendered":"JM Review |When AI Giants Grow Like Sequoias, Everything Else Withers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u3010\u89c2\u70b9\u3011| Insight<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

For Sale<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

OpenAI raises $122 billion. Oracle cuts a fifth of its staff. Is AI creating a monoculture?<\/span><\/p>\n

By Yibai, Jointing.Media, 2026-04-02<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last night, OpenAI\u2019s mega funding round swept\u00a0the headlines. This morning, Oracle laid off almost a fifth\u00a0of its global workforce \u2014a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, funneling cash into an AI infrastructure money pit.<\/p>\n

I thought of the Victoria water lily and the giant sequoia. Their grandeur is built on the death of other species.<\/p>\n

The Victoria water lily\u2019s leaves can grow up to three meters across, studded \u00a0with spines on the underside. By blanketing the water\u2019s surface, they block sunlight and suppress photosynthesis in other aquatic plants. Eerily similar to how dominant AI companies hoard capital and talent.<\/p>\n

The giant sequoia, native to the U.S. West Coast, is the largest living organism on Earth. Its survival strategy:a deceptively shallow root system that spreads wide and sucks up every drop of surface moisture, leaving surrounding plants to wither.<\/p>\n

If AI\u2019s monopolistic logic proceeds unchecked, will the result be a handful of giants and little else?<\/p>\n

On March 31, OpenAI closed its largest funding round to date \u2014 $122 billion (including $110 billion disclosed in February), at an $852 billion valuation.<\/div>\n
\n
That astronomical capital is the water lily\u2019s leaf, casting a shadow over the entire venture capital ecosystem. Money that could have flowed into biotech, clean energy, or educational innovation is instead being siphoned into a handful of large\u2011model compute races.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

OpenAI now pays top AI scientists millions \u2014 even tens of millions \u2014 a year. This “talent inflation” leaves other fields \u2014 drug discovery, materials science, traditional software engineering \u2014 struggling to keep up. Countless researchers once focused on niche problems are now being pulled into a single question: “How can we make LLM faster?”<\/p>\n

The \u201cStargate\u201d project, a partnership between OpenAI, Microsoft, and Oracle, plans to spend hundreds of billions on data centers. These hyperscale facilities consume as much electricity as a mid\u2011sized city. In an era of tight energy supply, this \u201cpower privilege\u201d squeezes the quotas of traditional manufacturing and residential use.<\/p>\n

The water lily and the sequoia aren\u2019t evil by design \u2014 they follow their genetic programming, choosing the most efficient path to survival. The logic of AI giants is no different. In a winner\u2011takes\u2011all business model, growth itself becomes the goal. Biodiversity is just the cost.<\/p>\n

When giants offer APIs at ultra\u2011low cost and keep lowering prices, startups trying to build smaller models or vertical applications lose their room to breathe. The open\u2011source community remains active, but against the sheer compute of closed\u2011source behemoths, it\u2019s outmatched.<\/p>\n

Huge numbers of software engineers, IT operations staff, and customer service agents are being replaced or pushed to the margins. The landscape begins to look like a forest stripped of undergrowth \u2014 nothing but towering trees.<\/p>\n

AI\u2011generated content is rapidly crowding out original human creations online. Like the lily\u2019s leaves covering a pond, the native plants beneath (human creativity) wither for lack of sunlight (traffic and attention). The internet is shifting from a tropical rainforest of human interaction into an artificial conifer forest of AI output.<\/p>\n

In nature, despite their dominance, the lily and the sequoia are still part of the ecosystem. Sequoia bark is fire\u2011resistant; their mass stores carbon. The lily\u2019s leaves shelter some fish. Similarly, AI brings productivity gains and faster science.<\/p>\n

What truly deserves vigilance is the risk of monoculture. If an ecosystem has nothing but sequoias, a single pest \u2014 an AI security breach or an energy crisis \u2014 could bring down the whole system.<\/p>\n

That concern is already generating counterforces. Regulators in the U.S. and Europe are watching the \u201ciron triangle\u201d of Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia for monopolistic behavior. The market is also spinning off smaller, more energy\u2011efficient edge models \u2014 the shrubs and vines finding space in the giants\u2019 shadows. Far\u2011sighted thinkers argue that the future of AI shouldn\u2019t be a handful of sequoias, but a tropical rainforest of models of all sizes, functions, and ownership models.<\/p>\n

But in a world of sequoias and water lilies \u2014 can a rainforest still grow?<\/p>\n

\u4e2d\u6587\u539f\u6587<\/a><\/p>\n

Translated <\/em>by DeepSeek<\/em><\/p>\n

Edited by Wind<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo by CY Lab<\/em><\/p>\n

Ralated:<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Black-box AI shift the risk onto society as a whole<\/a><\/h3>\n

Algorithm as Power, it Demands a Cage<\/a><\/h2>\n

On \u2018315\u2019: The Ethical Dilemmas of China\u2019s Internet Enterprises<\/a><\/h2>\n

SpaceX Now Valued at $350 Billion Facing Space Debris Problem<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u3010\u89c2\u70b9\u3011| Insight For Sale OpenAI raises $122 billion. Oracle cuts a fifth of its staff. Is AI creating a monoculture? By Yibai, Jointing.Media, 2026-04-02 Last night, OpenAI\u2019s mega funding round swept\u00a0the headlines. This morning, Oracle laid off almost a fifth\u00a0of its global workforce \u2014a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, funneling cash into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-csr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1508,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions\/1508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jointings.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}