Van der Vlist, Helmond and Ferrari dismantle the fantasy of artificial intelligence as an abstract intelligence floating above infrastructure. Their thesis is direct: there is no AI without Big Tech. AI is not only models, datasets or applications; it is a stack of cloud infrastructure, computational resources, platform services, corporate partnerships, acquisitions, marketplaces and sector-specific solutions. The concept of Big AI names the structural convergence of artificial intelligence and cloud capitalism. The paper’s technographic method looks at the material and corporate supports that make AI operational: cloud products, developer ecosystems, APIs, investments, model hosting, enterprise integration and industry solutions. This shifts critique from spectacular outputs to dependency architecture. A small AI company sits on a stack owned by hyperscale firms; public institutions adopt AI while becoming dependent on private infrastructures whose economic logic and technical standards shape the future of governance. The cloud is not immaterial; it is a political architecture that concentrates power by making others build upon it.
URBANISM MEETS ART