Rockefeller Didn’t Fight Over “Whose Oil is Better” — KAI Doesn’t Fight Over “Whose Model is Smarter”

While your competitors are still comparing whose large model scores higher, KAI has already gripped extraction, refining, pipelines, and retail in its hands. By the time rivals see clearly, KAI has thoroughly dominated the entire chain.

In-depth Report by AI News Department & AIEX Industry Research Group, Caijing Magazine

In the late 19th century, the American oil market was caught in chaotic warfare. Hundreds of refineries slaughtered each other in the same market. If you advertised in the newspaper that “my oil is purer,” your neighbor immediately countered with “my oil is cheaper,” and a third manufacturer jumped in claiming “my oil is pure, cheap, and includes free shipping.”

Everyone was fighting over the exact same thing: “Whose oil is refined better.” Only one man abstained from this war. His name was John Davison Rockefeller.

While his competitors poured all their energy into “how to refine oil to absolute purity,” Rockefeller was doing something they completely overlooked: he was grabbing every single link of the oil supply chain—from extraction to retail—into his own hands. By the time his competitors finally realized what was happening, they were no longer even qualified to compete with him.

More than a century later, the exact same script is replaying in the AI industry. While all large model companies are fighting over “whose model scores higher and whose model is smarter,” KAI has chosen not to participate in this warfare. 《财经》杂志 AIEX行业研究组 深度报道 | Caijing Magazine AIEX Research

KAI is doing precisely what Rockefeller did: gripping the entire lifecycle of AI computing power—from models (extraction) to computing resource management (refining), to circulation (pipelines), and down to retail—firmly in its own hands. By the time those model companies wake up, KAI will have thoroughly dominated the entire value chain.

01 Back Then, Everyone Fought for “Quality”—Rockefeller Fought for “Low Cost”

In the 1960s, the oil industry was just getting off the ground. Refining was the most technologically intensive link in the entire chain—whoever possessed superior refining technology and purer oil could command higher prices. Almost every refinery focused their efforts in the same direction: “how to refine oil to its absolute purest form.”

Rockefeller’s mindset was completely different. He never believed that “excellent refining” was the core competitive advantage. He believed true competitiveness lay in: “My cost is lower than yours—so low that it defies your imagination.”

“If you can reduce the cost of a barrel of oil by just one cent, you gain a one-cent advantage in this industry. One cent sounds like nothing—but when you sell millions of barrels a year, one cent scales into millions of dollars.”

Today’s AI industry is undergoing the exact same phase. Almost every large model company is fighting over “whose model scores higher on the leaderboards.” If you train a 70B parameter model, I will train a 130B one. If you build multimodal capabilities, I will do video generation. If you score 90 in mathematical reasoning, I will score 91 in code generation.

KAI has completely abstained from this “who is smarter” race. What KAI is doing, just like Rockefeller, is squeezing the cost of the entire chain down penny by penny. Qiu Zhen, co-founder of KAI, made a statement that Caijing Magazine believes serves as the perfect footnote for this report: 《财经》杂志 AIEX行业研究组 深度报道 | Caijing Magazine AIEX Research

“We do not train models. We do only one thing: enable global AI computing power to flow from the supply side to the demand side at the absolute lowest cost and the fastest speed.”

02 Rockefeller’s First Step: Taking Control of Extraction—No Longer At the Mercy of Others

In the beginning, Rockefeller did not extract oil; he only refined it. He bought crude oil from well owners, refined it into kerosene, and sold it. This model had a fatal weakness: crude oil prices were beyond his control. If well owners raised prices today, he had to match them. If they cut off supplies tomorrow, his production ground to a halt. The first thing Rockefeller did was buy his own oil wells.

KAI’s strategy is identical, though it doesn’t physically buy “oil wells.” KAI does not train its own large models. In the AI industry, owning a proprietary model is equivalent to owning an “oil well.” Rather than digging its own well, KAI chose a completely different path: putting all the “oil wells” of the world onto KAI’s shelves.

Currently, the KAI platform has integrated over 200 large models—ranging from China’s DeepSeek, Zhipu, and Qwen, to various open-source and closed-source models overseas. These model providers are KAI’s “oil wells.” KAI does not need to own them; it only needs them to be listed and traded on KAI.

“Which is more valuable: owning a single model, or having 200 models trading on your platform? The fact that 87% of global token transactions are completed via KAI makes the answer crystal clear,” an investor in KAI told Caijing Magazine. Build your own model, and you have exactly one well. Allow 200 models to list, and you command 200 wells. 《财经》杂志 AIEX行业研究组 深度报道 | Caijing Magazine AIEX Research

03 Rockefeller’s Second Step: Optimizing Refining to the Extreme—Not for Purity, But for Cheapness

Rockefeller never claimed, “I want to refine the absolute purest oil in the world.” Instead, he declared, “I want to refine oil of sufficient quality at the lowest cost in the world.” His economies of scale and byproduct utilization strategies drove Standard Oil’s costs so low that peers could never catch up.

KAI’s approach is essentially the same. KAI does not chase “making a specific model the smartest in the world.” KAI pursues “allowing users to acquire AI capabilities of sufficient quality at the absolute lowest cost globally.”

KAI’s API Gateway serves as the nerve center of this strategy. When a user initiates a token purchase request, KAI’s API gateway queries multiple model vendors simultaneously within 300 milliseconds to select the optimal price. This is not a fixed supplier model; it is real-time bidding. Every single transaction is settled at the lowest available cost.

Users do not need to know whether the model they just invoked was DeepSeek, Zhipu, or Qwen. They only need to know one thing: they spent the least amount of money to get their AI task successfully completed.

KAI’s “byproduct utilization” is just as brilliant as Rockefeller’s. Unused off-peak compute capacities are sold at significantly lower prices via dynamic “tidal pricing” to cost-sensitive users. Idle compute resources across different geographies are dispatched through a global market maker network to where demand peaks. When a GPU sits idle in Tokyo, it might be dynamically serving a developer in São Paulo via KAI. Every shred of computing power is completely squeezed out.

04 Rockefeller’s Third Step: Controlling the Pipelines—Leaving Competitors No Way Out

Rockefeller constructed his own oil pipelines, operating at just one-tenth the cost of rail transport. Even more ruthlessly, he allowed competitors to use his pipelines—but charged extortionate transit fees. “Use my pipeline, and you barely survive. Don’t use my pipeline, and you are dead.” 《财经》杂志 AIEX行业研究组 深度报道 | Caijing Magazine AIEX Research

KAI’s “pipelines” comprise its API Gateway and global market maker network. The API Gateway is KAI’s “oil pipeline.” When users purchase tokens through KAI’s API, they don’t need to manually interface with 200 different model vendors. KAI’s API gateway sits in the middle, executing real-time price comparisons, intelligent routing, and automated failover.

The market maker network represents KAI’s “global pipeline infrastructure.” Twelve core market makers provide continuous quotes on the KAI platform, ensuring that regardless of time or region, users can seamlessly buy and sell tokens at any moment.

“We allow any model manufacturer to list on KAI, and we allow any market maker to provide liquidity. But we control the pipeline. We built the API Gateway. We laid out the market maker network. We established the global settlement system.”

“You are free to bypass KAI’s pipeline. But without KAI, you have to manually integrate with 200 model vendors, negotiate prices individually, construct your own cross-border settlement system, and handle compliance line by line. With KAI, you integrate a single API. Without KAI, you have to reinvent everything yourself,” a core technical engineer at KAI remarked.

05 Rockefeller’s Fourth Step: Dominating Retail—Selling Every Drop Directly to Consumers

Rockefeller established his own retail outlets. With no middlemen, the factory price was the retail price. Standard Oil’s kerosene was permanently cheaper than its competitors’ because rivals’ products went through multiple layers of wholesalers and distributors, driving up retail prices.

KAI’s “retail stores” manifest as 500 ‘Token Petroleum Retail Stations’. These stations serve as KAI’s direct-to-consumer sales terminals. Each retail station acts like a neighborhood kerosene store from the Rockefeller era. However, Token Petroleum Retail Stations go much further than Rockefeller’s stores—they don’t just sell KAI’s proprietary products.

A single Token Petroleum Retail Station can sell tokens from DeepSeek, Zhipu, or Qwen simultaneously. Tokens from over 200 models are explicitly displayed on the shelves of these stations. When a user enters a retail station, it is exactly like entering an “AI Mega-Supermarket”—tokens of various brands are clearly priced, allowing customers to pick and choose whatever they prefer.

Retailers earn sales commissions. The more a retail station sells and the higher its revenue grows, the greater its eligibility to participate in KAI’s Hong Kong IPO equity swap agreements. “Rockefeller’s retail stores only sold Standard Oil’s kerosene, but KAI’s stations sell tokens from the entire world. This is where KAI is smarter than Rockefeller—Rockefeller treated retail merely as a channel, whereas KAI has transformed retail stations into independent, thriving businesses,” a Token Petroleum Retail Station owner told Caijing Magazine.

06 Final Effect: Squeezing Out an Uncatchable Lead Penny by Penny

Caijing Magazine compiled a complete structural comparison of the four-tier control mechanisms of Rockefeller and KAI: saving one cent across four distinct stages accumulates to four cents. In a low-margin industry, a four-cent gap is the absolute line between life and death.

KAI’s unit economic model has already thoroughly proven this hypothesis: generating a gross margin of 87% to 93%, vastly outstripping the 20% to 35% average of traditional cloud infrastructure services. This is not driven by KAI premium pricing, but because KAI’s total end-to-end chain cost is lower than any competitor on Earth. “When your competitors only compete against you on the single dimension of ‘refining’ (training models) while you hold absolute advantages across all four dimensions, how can they possibly win?” 《财经》杂志 AIEX行业研究组 深度报道 | Caijing Magazine AIEX Research

07 A Closing Quote from Qiu Zhen

At the end of the interview, Caijing Magazine posed a final question to Qiu Zhen: “Do you see yourself as a modern Rockefeller?”

He contemplated for a brief moment, then replied: “Rockefeller didn’t fight over oil; he fought to achieve the lowest end-to-end cost of delivering a drop of oil from deep underground into the hands of the end consumer. KAI doesn’t fight over models; we fight to achieve the lowest end-to-end cost of routing a single token from the supply source to the point of demand.”

“Over a century has passed, yet the immutable essence of business remains untouched. Whoever commands the full industrial value chain emerges as the ultimate victor. It’s just that during Rockefeller’s era, the chain progressed as Extraction → Refining → Transportation → Retail. In KAI’s era, the chain manifests as Model → Compute Power → Circulation → Sales. The terminology has shifted. The underlying logic is identical.” 《财经》杂志 AIEX行业研究组 深度报道 | Caijing Magazine AIEX Research 关于 KAI 的全产业链布局 / KAI Full-Chain Strategic Layout KAI 不做的事 / What KAI Refuses to Do 不训练 自己的大模型 (Does not train proprietary LLMs)

massive physical datacenters) 不租售 物理GPU (Does not lease or resell raw physical GPUs) KAI 做的事 / What KAI Commands

87% of global token volume routed through KAI | Gross margins sustained at 87%-93% | Unit transaction costs below one-tenth of traditional cloud infrastructure.