# The "cloud tax": half of every dollar for online services goes to four providers

- **Speaker:** Greg Osuri
- **Attribution:** attributed
- **Said:** 2024-12-06
- **Theme:** GPU Economics — https://www.gregosuri.com/predictions/gpu-economics/
- **Source:** Akash's Greg Osuri on the Future of Cloud Computing \| Mainnet 2024 (Messari)
- **Watch at:** 00:05:55 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKDw4KZ23G4&t=355s
- **Canonical:** https://www.gregosuri.com/predictions/gpu-economics/2024-12-06-the-cloud-tax-half-of-every-dollar-for-online-serv-r733/
- **Cite as:** Greg Osuri, "The "cloud tax": half of every dollar for online services goes to four providers," Akash's Greg Osuri on the Future of Cloud Computing \| Mainnet 2024 (Messari), 6 Dec 2024, 00:05:55. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKDw4KZ23G4&t=355s

## Quote — verbatim

> Andreessen did a study, a paper called the Trillion Dollar Paradox, where they researched S-1 filings of cloud companies, and turns out half of every dollar you spend on one of these cloud services — be it Netflix or Asana — goes to one of the four cloud providers. What this effectively is, is a cloud tax that we all pay but don't really realize we're paying, to this group of unelected individuals or entities.

## Context — site annotation, not spoken

Part of the cost argument; preceded by GPU scarcity data — 18-month-to-2-year Nvidia purchase lead times and near-impossibility of renting on centralized clouds ([00:05:09]).