Five Figures to Make Sense of Big Tech Geopolitics in 2025
The 5 figures below offer insights into our current Big Tech’s geopolitics and help us understand AI’s evolving planetary networks. It builds on the long-form essay “Beyond Big Tech Geopolitics,” by Kai-Hsin Hung as part of Transnational Institute’s annual report on the Geopolitics of Capitalism: State of Power 2025 report.
In “Beyond Big Tech Geopolitics,” we argue that the current trajectory of geopolitics is intensifying global inequality through an AI arms race dominated by US and Chinese tech giants. This leads to a fragmented digital landscape and a looming “AI Iron Curtain” that risks deepening structural dependencies and digital divides. We call for a shift toward local, people-centred AI ecosystems by investing in public digital infrastructure, breaking monopolies, building a digital Non-Aligned Movement, supporting open-source innovation, and strengthening civil society to ensure technological progress serves communities and people, where AI can be for everyone.
Figure 1. Global Market Capitalization of Leading Technology Firms in 2024
This figure illustrates the market capitalization of the top 300 publicly traded technology firms at the end of 2024. US Big Tech companies, including Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, NVIDIA, Tesla, and others, account for $25 trillion of the global total of $31 trillion, representing 80% of the global technology sector’s valuation. This dominance highlights the significant market size of US Big Tech, attributed to their pioneering role in shaping the sector, though it is also considered unsustainably overvalued.
In early 2025, the market valuation of American Big Tech, including Nvidia and Tesla, fluctuated wildly and downwards, demonstrating the political economy of the changing geopolitics, sentiments, and alliances.
Figure 2. Shows the Rest of the World’s Tech Sector’s Valuation Outside of the US at the end of 2024.
After the US, Chinese Big Tech firms such as Alibaba, Baidu, Bytedance, Pinduoduo, Tencent, and Xiaomi collectively hold a market valuation of $1.4 trillion, or 4.5% of the total. Taiwanese companies, including TSMC and Foxconn, contribute 4.4%, while Japanese firms like Sony account for 2%. The Netherlands holds 1.4%, South Korea and Germany each have 1%, Canada 0.9%, and Israel and France complete the top ten players.
Figure 3. The Impact of US Sanctions on Chinese Big Tech: A Decline in Global Market Share by 2024
By 2024, over 1,400 Chinese entities were placed on various US sanction lists, doubling in just four years. This aggressive crackdown has had a significant impact. In 2019, Chinese Big Tech held around 20% of the global market value. By the end of 2024, this had fallen to under 5%, almost on par with the self-governing island of Taiwan. These tensions will continue as global geopolitics become more volatile, ushering in a new era of great power competition and heightened fragility.
Figure 4. Geopolitical Competition the Building of New Digital and AI Infrastructure: China’s BRI vs. G7’s PGII & Their Undersea Cables
The competition over undersea cables connecting Southeast Asia to Europe highlights this dynamic. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, includes a Digital Silk Road (DSR) component involving 40 countries. This initiative is funded by state-owned banks and financial institutions such as the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, along with tech giants like Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, and ZTE. One notable project is the completed Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) undersea cable, a 21,500 km network connecting France, Pakistan, and Singapore, developed by Huawei Marine’s successor, HMN Technologies, at a cost of $425 million.
In response to China’s BRI, the G7 launched the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), aiming to raise $600 billion by 2027, with contributions from the US, the European Union (EU), and Japan. This initiative seeks to strengthen and diversify global supply chains and support shared security interests. PGII is funded by multilateral development banks (MDBs), sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), and private capital sources like BlackRock and Brookfield global investment corporations. A flagship project awarded a $600 million contract to the US company SubCom to build the 17,000 km Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe 6 (SMW6) undersea cable, connecting Singapore to France via Egypt after HMN Technologies was dropped as the preferred supplier.
Figure 5. The Making of a Tiered Global AI Economy: Export Control of Compute Hardware Under the 2025 US Framework for AI Diffusion
The US Framework for AI Diffusion, introduced at the end of the Biden administration in January 2025 and maintained under the second Trump administration, seeks to secure US leadership in artificial intelligence. This framework implements a three-tiered system for access to compute and model weights.
The US, plus 18 close partners, are in Tier 1 in green, with relatively unrestricted access to the latest AI chips, compute, and AI models. Most of the world is in Tier 2 in yellow, with managed import through a licensing program as part of this framework. The primary goal is to restrict advanced AI capabilities to US allies while preventing their diversion to China and 21 other adversaries in red.
As these export controls roll into place by mid-2025 and countries race to build sovereign AI ecosystems, global scientific collaboration could fracture, limiting who contributes to and benefits from technological progress. These risks turn science from a shared human endeavour into a fragmented, competitive tool and symbol of power.
Author: Kai-Hsin Hung, is a PhD candidate at HEC Montréal specializing in the quality of work in global AI value chains. He currently holds the Professional Development Award in Responsible AI with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), looking into compute access in low-resource settings. You can read his long-form essay, citations and more information, go to “Beyond Big Tech Geopolitics” by Kai-Hsin Hung as part of Transnational Institute’s annual report on the Geopolitics of Capitalism: State of Power 2025 report.