Venture capital, the fetish of artificial intelligence, and the contradictions of making intangible assets

David Kampmann

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper examines the venture capital-driven process of making intangible assets in platform start-up firms. By examining the case study of the rise and fall of a venture capital-backed ‘unicorn’ firm developing a digital health platform, this paper argues that the process of real valorization of capital invested in platform start-up firms involves the making of algorithmic systems and data as intangible assets as well as the experimentation with strategies of exploitation and appropriation, which are inherently linked to the future-oriented financial valorization process of equity shares since unprofitable start-up firms continuously require outside capital to expand operations. While the fetish of ‘artificial intelligence’ posing the firm’s chatbot for self-diagnosis as an intelligent ‘doctor in your pocket’ plays an important role in financial valorization, it is the failed real valorization process in making profits that ultimately leads to the platform start-up’s financial collapse. The conceptual contribution of the paper centres on the contradictory nature of assetization processes which sheds light on how class domination operates in and through venture capital-driven accumulation.

Keywords: venture capital; asset making; Babylon Health; artificial intelligence chatbot; fetishism of technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2024-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Economy and Society, 31, January, 2024, 53(1), pp. 39 - 66. ISSN: 0308-5147

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121107/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:121107

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().