Who owns intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has largely been discussed through the prism of technological supremacy: which company has the most powerful model, who is winning the benchmark race, and how quickly AI will transform jobs and industries. Yet, a recent exchange between Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu points to a more fundamental issue. The real contest may not be over building the best AI models but over owning the economic value they create. Karp’s contention that enterprises must own the “means of production” in the AI era, a view endorsed by Vembu, shifts the debate from technology to economics.