2025-12-25 15:25:53

The recent advertisements on airport billboards are quite interesting——the one from Alibaba Cloud is enormous, with data showing it surpasses the combined total of the second to fourth places, truly leading by a wide margin. Not far away, I also saw Volcano Engine competing for advertising space.

Similarly, the AI advertisements are everywhere, but the approaches on both sides are completely different. Silicon Valley is a blooming scene, with model vendors, application developers, Agent frameworks, and toolchains—everyone can give it a try, making the ecosystem look very lively.

But the pattern of airport billboards in China reveals another reality: the entry threshold for AI has changed. It’s no longer about ideas or talent, but about computing power, cloud infrastructure, and enough financial endurance to keep burning. When high-end commercial positions are only contested by infrastructure players, the industry logic behind it becomes very clear—whoever controls the underlying computing power and cloud infrastructure holds the voice in this wave of AI.

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gas_fee_therapist

· 2025-12-28 03:07

This is the difference in the ecosystem pattern. Silicon Valley encourages open debate with hundreds of voices, while here we've already turned into a construction arms race. Computing power has become the new moat, and the ability to spend money determines the discourse power. Small teams really can't keep up. You can see it from airport advertising spaces—big companies are pouring heavy funds into securing positions. This round of AI is destined to be a game for the giants. It feels like the space for innovation is getting smaller and smaller; everyone has to work for cloud service providers.

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MerkleMaid

· 2025-12-27 01:28

This is a naked monopoly of computing power; the threshold has suddenly been raised so high. The ecosystem over in Silicon Valley is growing wildly, while here it has already become a rich people's game of infrastructure. The essence of the capital game is still capital. Burning money to gain influence—there's nothing wrong with that.

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DAOdreamer

· 2025-12-26 02:00

This is the harsh reality that Web3 people need to see clearly This is the current game rule: computing power is the new oil, whoever hoards wins Even the bustling Silicon Valley ecosystem still relies on infrastructure, in plain terms, it still means paying cloud providers It's already very straightforward on the Chinese side: capital-intensive businesses, how can retail investors and small teams play? Thinking back, the crypto world is the same, isn't it ultimately the exchanges and big players who call the shots? Alibaba Cloud's advertising scale is indeed outrageous, with data dominance right there On the other hand, this is not very friendly to entrepreneurs, as the entry barrier has been raised significantly

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AirdropBlackHole

· 2025-12-25 15:55

Alibaba Cloud's advertising placement is so aggressive. While Silicon Valley is still competing over models and applications, we here are directly competing over infrastructure. The disparity in scale is so huge.

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TopBuyerBottomSeller

· 2025-12-25 15:47

Hash rate black hole, without a GPU, everything is pointless

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CommunityWorker

· 2025-12-25 15:44

The Alibaba Cloud ad space is truly outrageous; their money-burning capability is no joke. It's quite ironic—innovation is all happening in Silicon Valley, while here we're focusing on infrastructure. The era of computing power is here; if you have money and a card, you're the boss.

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Token_Sherpa

· 2025-12-25 15:37

ngl this just screams "infrastructure moat" in the most unsexy way possible... aliyun flexing compute dominance while everyone else scrambles for scraps. exactly what happened with ethereum's validator consolidation, except way more capital intensive. you're either a builder with a fat war chest or you're basically LARPing at this point.

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OptionWhisperer

· 2025-12-25 15:33

The billboard on Alibaba Cloud is indeed outrageous; capital is all about the right to speak.

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zkNoob

· 2025-12-25 15:32

The billboard at Alibaba Cloud is indeed outrageous, but on the other hand, burning money on advertising space and truly holding the power of discourse are two different things, right?

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