AI – Masters, Myth and Majesty

Abstract

The major artificial intelligence companies of 2026 — OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google DeepMind, Meta, Amazon, and their Chinese counterparts — are not merely corporations. They are, in their trajectory, arguably the most significant concentrations of private power since the chartered trading companies of the colonial era; and, like those companies, they may be acquiring governmental functions that their commercial mandates do not explain and their democratic accountability does not justify. This article examines the dual condition described in its title: the myth — the speculative stock valuation bubble that has inflated AI company power to historically unprecedented levels, and whose potential correction will be as consequential as its inflation; and the majesty — the governmental, regulatory, and political power that AI company founders and executives are potentially acquiring in parallel with, and partly as a consequence of, that financial inflation. The article argues that as Western governments evolve towards what might be termed as technocratic social democracy — arguably a governance model most congruent with AI integration at scale — the relationship between AI companies and the states that nominally regulate them may result in a structural inversion: the companies may not merely influence government. They may, in measurable and consequential respects over time, become it.

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