OpenAI
Valued around $850 billion as of March 2026 and projected to burn $14 billion this year . The lab that made this a public argument rather than a research one. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe deck · 52 cards
The master deck · companion to all fifteen Figures Decks
The Contenders
Not who holds power — who is coming for it
⌬ How to read this deck
Every other deck in this hall answers one question: who holds power right now? Those decks are made of
people. This one is different. It asks what is accumulating power, and who will be a contender next —
and it is made of bodies, not persons. Labs, treasuries, movements, states. A person can die in the night
and a card falls; an organisation outlives everyone on its payroll, which is exactly why it belongs on a
separate table.
Rank is the weight of the body, Ace highest down to 2 — reach, resources, and how hard it would be to
replace. It is one house's reading, not a league table.
⌬ All 52 cards dealt — this deck is complete. Not one slot was filled to finish it:
a card was added only when its facts had been checked online, and until then the rank stood empty as
ON ORDER — the same rule that keeps the Bahá'í deck honestly short at fifteen. Every card below was
verified 2026-07-25 or 2026-07-26. Organisations outlive people, but their numbers rot faster than people do —
re-check before citing.
♠ The Machine Builders — those building the thing itself
♦ The Scale Powers — capital & platforms accumulating power at a scale states cannot match
♥ The Rising Congregations — faiths and movements gaining ground
♣ The Opposition — the powers working to stop AI & innovation
♠The Machine Buildersthose building the thing itself · 13 cards
The organisations actually constructing artificial intelligence, and the ones supplying the silicon it runs on. This suit is the reason the whole hall now has a machine question. Note what the money says: the two largest are valued near or above a trillion dollars while making a loss, which means the market is not pricing a product — it is pricing an outcome.
Anthropic
Roughly $965 billion post-money after a $65 billion Series H on 28 May 2026 — the most highly valued AI startup in the world . Reported to spend $1.25 billion a month on compute . Disclosure: the model writing this hall is Anthropic's. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsGoogle DeepMind
The only frontier lab inside a company that already owns the world's search, video and mobile platforms. Holds the reported edge on non-text modalities . Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsMeta AI
The fourth of the dominant Western labs, spending heavily to catch the top three — and the only one whose distribution is three billion people already inside its own social products. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsxAI
Owns Colossus 1 , about 300,000 H100-equivalent GPUs , and Colossus 2. Reported to be renting Colossus 1 entire to Anthropic for up to $15 billion a year — a lab that makes more from housing a rival than racing it. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsNVIDIA
Everyone above is a customer. The chokepoint of the entire suit — and the reason US export controls on the H100 and A100 reshaped Chinese AI rather than stopping it. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsAlibaba · Qwen
Passed one billion cumulative downloads on Hugging Face by March 2026 — faster than any open-source model family in history . By the measure that matters in open weights, it has already won. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · holdsDeepSeek
V4 delivers frontier-level performance at $0.87 per million output tokens — and runs on Huawei-made processors . The lab that proved the frontier could be cheap. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsMoonshot AI · Kimi
17 July 2026 — released Kimi K3 , a 2.8-trillion-parameter model billed as the world's largest open-source model, and moved markets doing it. Eight days before this deck was built. Verified 07-25 · will change
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsHuawei
The Ascend processor line — the answer to the export controls. The chip that makes a frontier model possible without a single American GPU. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsZhipu AI · GLM
Reported as the first to train a frontier model entirely on Huawei Ascend chips, with no Nvidia hardware at all — the proof of concept for an independent Chinese stack. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsByteDance · Doubao
The owner of TikTok competing across reasoning and multimodal AI — distribution first, model second , which is the same bet Meta is making. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsBaidu · ERNIE
China's search incumbent, competing on enterprise adoption. The suit's tail is instructive: six of these thirteen cards are Chinese. Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: Card error, not a change in the world: the suit lists seven Chinese cards (Alibaba, DeepSeek, Moonshot, Huawei, Zhipu, ByteDance, Baidu), not 'six of these thirteen'. Baidu facts hold: ERNIE 5.0 released 2026-01-22, enterprise use via Qianfan.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGED♦The Scale Powerscapital & platforms accumulating power at a scale states cannot match · 13 cards
Two kinds of scale, one suit: money large enough to be a political fact, and platforms deploying AI at web scale — not building the models, but pushing them to billions of people inside products those people already use. The top twenty asset managers now control 47% of all assets under management, up from 45.5% in 2023; concentration is still increasing. The five open ranks are held for the web-scale deployers — the hyperscalers and platform owners — and stay empty until their 2026 figures are checked rather than assumed.
BlackRock
Over $13.9 trillion under management as of Q1 2026 — larger than the economy of any country on earth except the United States and China , and it owns a slice of almost everything in the ♠ suit above. Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: Card's $13.9T (Q1 2026) is superseded: BlackRock reported record AUM of $15.34T at 2026-06-30, in Q2 results released 2026-07-15 (Q1 was $13.89T). Rest of the card holds. UNSOURCED: larger than any economy except US and China.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGEDVanguard
Roughly $12 trillion under management. Structurally owned by its own funds, which makes it answerable to no outside shareholder at all . Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsFidelity Investments
About $6.8 trillion . Privately held, which means the third-largest pool of managed capital on earth publishes almost nothing it is not obliged to . Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: Card's ~$6.8T is out of date: Fidelity reported $7.1T managed assets at year-end 2025 (Bloomberg, 2026-03-02); a secondary source cites $7.8T at end Q2 2026. Still privately held. UNSOURCED: third-largest pool of managed capital.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGEDNorway · GPFG
The Government Pension Fund Global — about $2.0 trillion (NOK 21.3 trillion), up 15.1% in 2025 . The largest sovereign fund in the world , and the one that votes its shares on ethical grounds. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsSaudi PIF
One of the four Gulf funds that now sit alongside or above the largest Asian sovereign funds — a decisive shift of sovereign scale toward the Gulf. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsADIA
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority — the oldest of the Gulf giants, and among the most deliberately silent institutions in global finance. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsKuwait Investment Authority
Founded 1953 — the world's first sovereign wealth fund , and still one of the four Gulf funds reshaping the sovereign league table. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsQatar Investment Authority
The fourth of the Gulf four. Between them these funds turn hydrocarbon revenue into permanent equity in everything else — including the machine builders. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsMicrosoft
One of the Big Five spending over $600 billion on infrastructure in 2026 — up 36% on 2025, with roughly $450 billion of it aimed at AI . In May 2026 signed with the Pentagon to put AI inside classified military networks . Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: Pentagon classified-network AI deal (announced ~2026-05-01) holds. Capex figures moved: after Q1 2026 earnings (late Apr 2026) the four hyperscalers alone guide >$700B for 2026 (Microsoft ~$190B CY2026), far above 'up 36%'; card's $600B/36%/$450B combo not found in current reporting. UNSOURCED: $600B Big Five capex; up 36%; $450B aimed at AI.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGEDAmazon · AWS
Part of the same May 2026 Pentagon agreements for classified-network AI , and one of the three hyperscalers putting more than $500 billion of capex into AI infrastructure this fiscal year. Also a backer of the K♠ card. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsAlphabet · Google Cloud
The third of the top three. Hyperscalers are forecast to own two-thirds of all data-centre capacity by 2031 — which is the quiet story of this suit: the ground the machine stands on is being bought by five companies. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsPalantir
Holds over $10 billion in contract ceiling across the US Army data consolidation agreement, Project Maven , Open DAGIR and intelligence programmes. The company that put AI inside the machinery of the state. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsAnduril
A US Army enterprise contract with a ceiling of up to $20 billion over five to ten years , folding 120–130 existing orders into one. With Palantir it is assembling a consortium to break the grip of Lockheed, Raytheon and Boeing . In FY2026's first half the DoD committed over $32 billion to AI, cloud and autonomy. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holds♥The Rising Congregationsfaiths and movements gaining ground · 13 cards
Where belief is actually growing, and which bodies are carrying it. Some of these are real organisations with addresses; some are forces with none — each card says which, rather than dressing a demographic trend up as a corporation. Two things to notice. The fastest growth in this suit is southern, and mostly has no headquarters — networks rather than institutions, which is exactly the shape the ♣ Opposition takes too. And the largest single number here belongs to the lowest card: 1.9 billion unaffiliated people who are beginning to shrink.
Islam · the demographic
Projected to be the fastest-growing major religion of the century : +70% between 2015 and 2060 against 32% global population growth. Median age 24 — the youngest of any major religious group — and 3.1 children per woman against 2.2 for everyone else. This card is arithmetic, not preaching. Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: Pew page confirms +70% 2015-2060 and median age 24, but says 'Muslim women have an average of 2.9 children' vs 2.2 for non-Muslims; card's 3.1 is the older 2010-15 figure from Pew's 2015 report (vs 2.3). Fertility should read 2.9.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGEDPentecostalism
The fastest-growing Christian movement by conversion in the global south. Sub-Saharan Africa already holds 44% of the world's Pentecostals , and by 2050 Pentecostals could be a third of 3.3 billion Christians . It has no headquarters — which is precisely its strength. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe SSPX
Consecrated four bishops at Écône on 1 July 2026 against the pope's personal appeal, and was declared in schism the next day , six men excommunicated. The only card in this suit that is a real organisation with a real address — and it became a contender by walking out. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsRedeemed Christian Church of God
Roughly 9 million members worldwide and over 50,000 parishes across 197 countries , with more than 5 million members in Nigeria alone. It planted 296 new churches in the UK in five years — more than any other denomination . The mission field now runs from Lagos to London. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsNew Apostolic Reformation
Identified as the fastest-growing movement in the Christian world — alliances of non-denominational churches bound not by doctrine or tradition but by evangelism and church planting. It has no headquarters to negotiate with and no confession to argue against. Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-11: "Fastest-growing movement in the Christian world" is not supported. Wikipedia's sourced phrase is the fastest-growing group "within or on the periphery of American Christianity" since the 1980s. No independent global demographic source was found.
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · CHANGEDThe non-denominational surge
In the Outreach 100, non-denominational churches lead both in number and in proportional growth . The fastest-growing hundred added 77,000 new attendees , averaging 20.6% growth . The rising congregation in America has no denomination at all. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · not confirmedRe-checked 2026-10-11: still no current Outreach 100 report giving 77,000 new attendees or 20.6% average growth; outreach100.com shows method only.
Southern Baptist Convention
The largest single denominational block in the Outreach 100 with 24 churches , averaging about 16.5% growth . The last great American denomination still growing at scale — and doing it while the category around it dissolves. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · not confirmedRe-checked 2026-10-11: the "24 Southern Baptist churches, 16.5%" figures are still unconfirmed; the only "24" found is a Baptist Press piece on a 2012-data edition.
The gigachurch
American megachurches are expanding by multiplying campuses across geography rather than filling one building. A congregation that is no longer a place — which is exactly the shape a body takes when it intends to keep growing. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsLatter-day Saints
The Church's own newsroom trailed its April 2026 World Report under the heading historic church growth . Treat with care: this is the institution reporting on itself , and no independent 2026 figure was confirmed. Carded because a claim that large is itself a fact about intent. See Dossier on Mormonism. Verified 07-25 · self-reported
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe Chinese house churches
China's registered Christian population is about 44 million ; estimates of the true figure run as high as 160 million , and one projection reaches 250 million by 2030 . In July 2026 a national campaign arrested thousands and drove congregations further underground. Rank badly understates this card — it may be the largest body in the suit, and it is not allowed to exist. Verified 07-26 · will change ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-11: No single July 2026 national campaign arresting "thousands" is reported. ChinaAid documents ongoing regional raids: Yueyang on 11 July (many questioned, six held), Early Rain in Chengdu on 26 July (no arrests), and Henan and Wuhan detentions. 44M registered is unsourced; 160M and 250M are Fenggang Yang projections.
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · CHANGEDExarchate of Africa
Moscow created it on 29 December 2021 after breaking communion with Alexandria over Ukraine, taking in 102 clergy from eight countries . By early 2026: parishes in 36 countries, 370+ communities, 260+ priests — by the Russian Church's own account possibly the largest geographical expansion in its history . Alexandria called it “the immoral invasion and incursion.” Verified 07-26 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-11: The latest official totals found are from February 2025: about 350 parishes in 34 countries, with 259 priests and 7 deacons. The card's early-2026 figures (36 countries, 370+ communities, 260+ priests) were not found. The founding facts (29 Dec 2021, 102 clergy, eight countries) stand.
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · CHANGEDEvangelicalism
Growing at 1.34% a year — faster than any other Christian branch . The engine is the global south: Africa now holds 780 million Christians growing at 2.6% , Asia 415 million at 1.27%. In 1900, 17.6% of Christians lived in the global south. Today it is 69%. Verified 07-26
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe Nones
1.9 billion religiously unaffiliated — the world's third-largest category , which grew by 270 million between 2010 and 2020 , more than any group except Muslims. And now the turn: growth has “slowed to a crawl” and is projected to decline over the next fifty years . Atheists peaked at 165 million in 1970 and are down to 146 million . The secular age wins by conversion and loses by birth rate. Verified 07-26
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holds♣The Oppositionthe powers working to stop AI & innovation · 13 cards
The enemies list. Not enemies of belief — enemies of the machine: the regulators, courts, coalitions and movements with the actual power to slow, fine, fence or halt what the ♠ suit is building. Ranked by how much damage they can do right now, not by how loudly they object. Note the shape of it: the serious opposition is not protest, it is procedure — statutes, attorneys general, planning committees and the electricity grid. States that persecute believers were moved out of this suit on 2026-07-25 and now live at The Persecutors, because they are a different subject.
The European Union
The only body on earth that can fine a frontier lab into a different strategy. From 2 August 2026 the Commission's enforcement powers over general-purpose model providers come into force, with penalties up to €35 million or 7% of worldwide annual turnover . High-risk provisions are already fully applicable. Seven per cent of global revenue is not a fine, it is a leash. Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: AI Office enforcement powers over GPAI providers did start 2026-08-02. But 'high-risk provisions already fully applicable' no longer holds: the AI Omnibus, in force 2026-07-27, postponed Annex III high-risk rules to 2027-12-02 and Annex I to 2028-08-02. Penalty ceilings not stated on this page. UNSOURCED: penalties up to EUR35M or 7%.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGEDThe 42 Attorneys General
A 42-state coalition of attorneys general signalling coordinated action through 2026, after enforcement against AI deployers rose sharply in 2025. No single one can stop a lab; forty-two acting together can bury one in discovery. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe state legislatures
109 AI laws and 28 data-centre laws enacted by 1 July 2026. California, Colorado and New York lead, covering automated decisions and training-data transparency. Not one national ban — a patchwork, which is harder to fight than a wall. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe data-centre revolt
28 data-centre laws in six months , and a backlash that runs deeper than energy bills — affordability, water, sustainability, and neighbours who simply do not want it. The machine needs land and power, and both are granted by county committees. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe soul argument
The largest opposition bloc on earth, and it is the subject of this entire hall. Nine of the fifteen traditions refuse machine personhood on one shared ground — the soul. In May 2026 Leo XIV spent his first encyclical on it , for 1.4 billion people. No regulator commands an audience that size. See Dossier XII, Field C . Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe Grok investigation
The European AI Office's first major investigation into a frontier chatbot — Grok, over synthetic media and illegal content. The test case that will show whether the Act has teeth or only text. Verified 07-25 · will change ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: Card mislabels it: the Grok probe is a Commission investigation of X under the Digital Services Act, opened 2026-01-26 (sexual deepfakes), not an AI Office / AI Act case. No decision or fine found as of 2026-10-08.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGEDCalifornia
Home to most of the ♠ suit and legislating against it anyway. Where California writes a rule, the rest of the market tends to follow rather than build twice. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe child-safety movement
Named as the mounting public pressure driving states to legislate — protecting children from chatbots. The one argument against AI that crosses every political line , and therefore the one that moves fastest into law. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsColorado
Among the first states with a broad statute on algorithmic decisions already in force — employment, credit, housing. Where AI stops being a product and becomes a regulated act. Verified 07-25 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: SB 24-205 never took effect: SB26-189, signed 2026-05-14, repealed and replaced it with a narrower automated-decision law (notice, explanation, human review; AG enforcement); duties start 2027-01-01, so 'already in force' is wrong. Still covers employment, credit, housing.
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · CHANGEDNew York
Legislating on training-data transparency — the disclosure requirement the labs have resisted hardest, because it is the doorway to every copyright claim behind it. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe grid
Not an organisation at all — the hard ceiling . Energy affordability and generating capacity now sit at the centre of the data-centre fight. The one adversary that cannot be lobbied, litigated or bought. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe jobs coalition
Part of the broad backlash spanning affordability, sustainability, job security and corporate accountability . Diffuse today — but it is the coalition that turns into a voting bloc the first time displacement is felt at scale. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsWashington's own courts
The card that breaks the suit's logic. A federal executive order directs the Department of Justice to sue states whose AI laws clash with light-touch policy, and Commerce to review "burdensome" state rules. Here the US federal government is not an adversary of AI — it is the adversary of AI's adversaries. Read this suit with that in mind. Verified 07-25 · will change
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holds
The Contenders · master deck of groups · companion to all fifteen Figures Decks ·
52 of 52 cards dealt — the deck is complete. Every card was checked online on 2026-07-25 or 2026-07-26. Organisations outlive people, but their numbers rot faster; re-check before citing.
⌬ Not who holds power — who is coming for it ⌬
LAMPSTAND 752 of 52 cards dealt — the deck is complete. Every card was checked online on 2026-07-25 or 2026-07-26. Organisations outlive people, but their numbers rot faster; re-check before citing.
⌬ Not who holds power — who is coming for it ⌬