THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE: JULY 2026
ALL THE MEDIA MAPS SINCE 2020 - IN ONE SPACE
Welcome to the Map Page! I post all my Media Universe Map here.
THIS IS THE JULY 2026 MAP:
My name is Evan Shapiro. People refer to me as a Media Cartographer. This map is why. Since 2020, using only publicly available data and powerpoint, I have been mapping the Media ecosystem, redrawing it each month and posting it here.
The ratios on the map are not subjective opinion... they’re maths. Each entity is represented to scale by their current valuation - the fairest way I could find to portray the gravitational pull of power in the info-entertainment-tech industrial complex and track the trajectories of all its major players over time.
As a point of comparison, here👇 is my first Media Map, circa 2020.
Drafting these maps, by hand, in PowerPoint; digging into the earning reports of every company on the map quarter after quarter; tracking the trajectories of all the planets, month after month, year after year, offers useful and unique perspective.
That process fuels this newsletter: where I publish more visualizations and infographical landscapes (such as the UK TV Universe, the Addressable Table of Elements, and the Creator Ecosphere) as part of weekly analytical essays covering the Media Industrial Complex and its ongoing mishegas.
The July map shows massive movement in the Media Universe.
🪐 Trad Media stagnates as AI capitalizations defy financial logic.
🪐 Anthropic is now valued more than Netflix, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Paramount, Fox Corporation, Roku, Spotify, Nintendo, Roblox, and Disco Bros... COMBINED.
🪐 FOX & Roku are now tethered - but will the combined value be the combined value? More? Less?
🪐 AND YET... Larry Ellison has lost $100 Billion in the last 30 days as Oracle plummets 35% to 404 billion - most apt number ever.
🪐 The race to be the world's most valuable company is really heating up, with Alphabet Inc., Apple, and NVIDIA jockeying for pole position.
🪐 Newly public Bending Spoons has been added to the map, at an eye-popping market cap of $23 billion.
🪐 There are 176 companies on the map with a total valuation of $32.1 Trillion.
🪐 Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX - just 9 companies - represent 76% of that value: $24.5T.
What does all this motion mean for the future of Media? That’s precisely what we cover here each week. So, stay tuned in to find out!
Below, you’ll find Media Maps from each year since 2020, in high resolution, for you to download and use however you like.
Much of this newsletter is free for everyone. But to help us fund all this cartography, we do periodically ask you to upgrade to Premium Peacenik — aka paid sub. If you want to join us in that effort, there’s a special offer below, just for you! If not, no worries — please keep reading for free.
Enjoy the Universe!
ESHAP
MEDIA UNIVERSE MAPS 2020-2026: IN HIGH RES
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