The politics of value: Platform economies in the ecological transition

Abstract

Platform economies are not only at the core of emerging digital forms of value production, but they are also central to the terms and sociotechnical conditions of possibility for ecological transition. In this exploratory essay, I sketch a conceptual approach to understanding the making of these terms and conditions through the politics of value. Broadly speaking, the politics of value refers to power struggles over what is considered valuable, offering a critical lens for analyzing economies undergoing transformation. Concretely, I use the case of a green venture capital fund, its investors, and investee companies to explore the interface of data, platforms, investors, and policymakers amidst efforts toward an ecological transition. I demonstrate how the platform companies’ valorization of data relates to the economic form of revenue, which underwrites the value of the venture capital fund. This centrality of revenue in the production of value structures ecological transition in such a way as to focus on scalable business models, rather than on new technology and updated infrastructures.

Introduction

This Themed Issue examines how “value” is produced from data in platform economies. To complement this initiative, I take the opportunity to think about the relationship between different forms of value production in platform economie — among them through data. In doing so, this relational approach aims to empirically situate value production in the “political economy” —as has been called for in this journal (see Narayan, 2024; Rikap, 2024) — and to bring two scholarly traditions into conversation: Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Political Economy. Platform economies are not only at the core of emerging digital forms of value production that are increasingly shaped by the prevalence of the asset form (e.g. Birch et al., 2021; Narayan, 2022; Roitman, 2023), but they are also central to the terms and sociotechnical conditions of possibility for ecological transition. In this exploratory essay, I sketch a conceptual approach to understanding the making of these terms and conditions through the politics of value. Broadly speaking, the politics of value refers to power struggles over what is considered valuable, offering a critical lens for analyzing economies undergoing transformation.

Concretely, I use the case of a green venture capital (VC) fund to explore the interface of the platform economy and ecological transformation. This case study allows linking a platform company, its main investor, and its investor's main (public) investor to explore the relations of value production and its political stakes. Please note that the case study is limited in scope and focuses on the role of investors in value production, aiming to shift attention away from corporations and toward their financial backends. To do this, the next section develops the notion of the valorization chain, which reveals how different actors produce value through translation, that is – in the tradition of STS – through power struggles around commensurability (see Callon, 1984). My use of the term valorization ¹ is intentional. Valuation is often used to refer to the financial practice of accounting for value (and its creation) (Muniesa, 2011), an operation that typically materializes on a firm's balance sheet. This focus, however, tends to neglect non-financial forms of value production, for instance through data, as specified in this Theme Issue. As an analytical tool, chains allow me to document how socio-material practices and relations produce political economic structures, unpacking the often overly broad category of the “political economy” (see Cooiman, 2024).

Through this framework, I first analyze the mechanisms that imprint revenue growth into platform economies’ value production. Concretely, I show how public and private investors negotiate the commensurability of different forms of value by centering on revenue. This work unpacks and specifies the notions of scale and hypergrowth, which are commonly used to describe platform business models (Cooiman, 2024; Shestakofsky, 2024), by tracing the emergence of the hypergrowth of revenue through the political and financial codification of investment relations. Second, I unpack the politics of value in the green transition, by showing how the process of value production through revenue structures the green transition against the backdrop of policymakers’ concrete initiatives, particularly under the European Green Deal (EGD).

Analytical framework

While the production of value through different economic forms, such as commodity, rent, or asset, is the topic of long debates reaching from Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen to Thomas Piketty and Melinda Cooper, the relationship between these forms requires renewed (and sustained) attention. Necessarily, the exploratory character of this commentary does not allow for a full discussion of the literature. Instead, I offer insights from STS, the anthropology of value and Marxian political economy to provide an analytical and methodological foundation for the proposed approach.

The first insight is that value exists in exchange (Appadurai, 1986). Drawing on Marx (2017 [1867]), Appadurai illustrates how economic value is produced in commodity exchange; as Simmel (2011 [1957]) suggested, the value of a commodity is not inherent or fixed; it materializes through the establishment of commensurability needed for exchange. Different value regimes, according to Appadurai, structure the circulation of economic objects. I argue that in today's asset-driven economy (Braun and Christophers, 2024), this insight extends beyond commodity exchange to include other prevailing forms of value, such as assets or rent. Commensurability, then, is not only needed to produce value in the exchange of commodities but also in the making and relating of diverse economic forms (Dobeson et al., 2025). In other words, the translation from one form of value to another—and the required commensurability—constitutes value (see also Strathern, 1992; Tsing, 2013). According to Callon, translation describes the processes that allow one or several actors to represent a larger network of actors (Callon, 1984: 224) and thus is, as Latour suggests, “the very soul of the process of relating” (Latour, 1994: 113). When translation begins with non-equivalence — in the case of this essay, between asset, revenue, and data— the question becomes how to render them equivalent or commensurable.

Here, power enters the frame (Callon, 1984). As Appadurai states, “…the link between exchange and value is politics” (1986: 3), where politics encompasses “relations, assumptions, and contests pertaining to power” (1986: 57). In other words, the value of economic objects is determined by the politics that unfold in social relations — in the case of this essay in the valorization chain. Importantly, once again, I argue that this insight applies beyond commodity exchange and includes value production through different economic forms.

Drawing on these now classic insights, I propose studying valorization chains. ² Valorization chains are chains of translation, where specific associations collectively make diverse forms of value (e.g. asset, revenue, commodity) commensurable. Concretely, different actors, including investors, capital providers, and managers, negotiate the relation between different forms of value (e.g. between data-based asset and the platform's firm value). This work of relating, I argue, structures the production of value along the chain. It is useful to think of this dynamic as a mode of imprinting (Cooiman, 2024): if successful, translation allows some actors to represent and thus shape others. In these chains, the connections between one form of value and another are not incidental or optional but integral to value production. By including not only platforms and their investors but also their capital providers, the chain situates platforms and their value production in a specific political economic structure. Crucially, this perspective allows for an analysis of the politics of value not only in a broad sense but also in a narrower, more immediate one by examining the influence of policymakers in structuring platform economy value production through the valorization chain.

Case study: GreenInvest

To illustrate my approach, I draw on the preliminary results of an exploratory case study with a European investment firm and its recently established venture capital fund, alongside prior research on the European venture capital landscape (Cooiman, 2023a, 2023b, 2024). ³ I refer to the firm as “GreenInvest” and its fund as “GreenFund”. GreenFund has a total fund volume of €100–200 million, placing it within the mid-range European funds. As a venture capital fund, GreenFund pools capital from various investors to acquire minority equity stakes in startup firms. One of their first investments is a startup (referred to as “GreenPlatform”) that operates an energy marketplace. GreenFund's primary capital providers are large corporations with strategic interests and state investors. The largest capital provider is a public investor, referred to as “StateFund”. The substantial involvement of public capital also reflects recent green industrial policy initiatives, in particular under the EGD, (Cooiman, 2023a; Gabor and Braun, 2025) and enables an exploration of the political structuring of value production.

I focus on several points of translation, or junctures where value politics materialize. In other words, at these junctures, different actors negotiate the commensurability between different value forms. I examine how these translations are codified through legal documents, operational protocols, financial models, and governance regimes. While an analysis of these documents and models cannot capture the full extent of the negotiations and power dynamics that shape them, it does shed light on the relating of different value forms to one another amidst power struggles — in the case of this essay, around value in the ecological transition. Concretely, instead of giving a full empirical analysis, I focus on two central outcomes: first, I show how the translation of data-asset to rent/revenue to fund-asset imprints revenue growth into platform economies’ value production, and second, I show how this logic then structures the ecological transition.

Points of translation

The documents and artefacts that codify the relations of the valorization chain include: the investment memorandum, the due diligence questionnaire, and the fund model. The investment memorandum (IM) is a general marketing document distributed to a wide range of potential investors. Its purpose is to advertise the fund's strategy and objectives to generate initial interest. Once an investor expresses interest, the due diligence questionnaire is issued—a detailed document in which GreenInvest responds to specific questions from a capital provider. This questionnaire serves as the foundation for the investor's decision-making process. In this case, the analysis draws on GreenFund's responses to the due diligence questionnaire by StateFund. In this document, GreenFund outlines its investment strategy, fund structure, operational practices, and planned returns. In contrast to the IM, the questionnaire goes through rounds of comments, clarifications, and negotiations between the capital provider and the investor. Finally, I draw on an analysis of the GreenFund fund model. Here, the fund managers model the projected value and returns of the portfolio to detail their investment strategy.

While the fund model and the IM implicitly capture power dynamics between GreenInvest and potential capital providers, as GreenInvest deliberately constructs them to attract sufficient capital, for instance, highlighting the sustainability angle to convince state investors, the questionnaire goes through explicit rounds of negotiations and discussions before legally binding contracts are signed. Together, these documents shed light on the relationship between capital providers and investors in the production of value.

Value production through revenue

In the following, I sketch the GreenFund valorization chain and analyze its relations. In the IM, GreenFund's first three investee companies are listed. They all operate socio-technical interfaces to collect data that they capitalize by selling access to third parties, thus qualifying as platforms in terms of business model and socio-technical architecture. Concretely, one of them, GreenPlatform, collects data on energy infrastructure. GreenPlatform configures this data as an asset to make it valuable (Birch and Muniesa, 2020). Specifically, they operate a marketplace for electricity and sell tailored access to businesses and governments. Therefore, they enroll electricity providers and collect live data on electricity, transforming it into an accessible and easy-to-navigate frontend, the “dashboard”. In addition, data is legally protected to ensure exclusive access. The emerging data-asset generates rent (the fees paid by electricity buyers and tailored platform customers), which, from the perspective of GreenPlatform, figures as revenue.

To fund and expand their business, GreenPlatform needs venture capital funds like GreenFund. To obtain funding, the data-asset with its revenue stream has to be able to justify another asset's value, namely that of GreenFund or the fund-asset, which consists of shares in many different platforms. Different capital providers, such as StateFund, acquire shares of the fund-asset if its value production strategy seems effective. Thus, the data-asset-driven revenue needs to be made commensurable with the fund-asset. In other words, investors attempt to translate revenue into asset. The crucial question then is how commensurability is achieved. Technically, GreenFund uses the valuation device (see Doganova, 2019) of exit multiples to translate revenue into the investee firms’ value, which then constitutes the value of the fund-asset as per the fund model. Exit multiples describe the ratio between firm value and revenue figure of historical transactions of comparable firms, but are, of course, also the result of value struggles. While a detailed analysis of these struggles is beyond the limited scope of this essay, GreenInvest interviewees explain that “pure tech” firms with software-driven models reach much higher multiples, often 10x, compared to enabling technologies or hardware firms. What makes these firms so much more valuable, according to the interviewees, is their ability to scale.

Indeed, GreenFund focuses mainly on firms with these potentially very high multiples, as per the IM on “digital, scalable, and asset-light” businesses. This follows from the value production model of the fund, which, in a nutshell, requires high returns (GreenFund targets a 25–40% internal rate of return (IRRs) and a multiple on invested capital of the capital providers of 2–4x) to compensate capital providers for the high risk of startup investing (see Cooiman, 2024). To obtain these high return rates, GreenFund needs businesses with extreme value increases, i.e. firms whose revenue grows swiftly and that are valued with a high revenue multiple.

The progression — data-asset – revenue – fund-asset — thus establishes revenue growth as central link structuring the production of value. Notably, GreenInvest uses revenue figures as the only financials to advertise the value of GreenFund's existing investments. Additionally, GreenInvest highlights their “active” approach to “value creation”, through “partnerships and scaling support for […] sales growth” (my own emphasis). Most of their capital providers also figure as “scaling partners”, allowing investee companies to access the network and infrastructure of established companies. Ultimately, GreenPlatform and its fellow investee companies thus produce value from data in such a way that allows them to increase their revenue growth most rapidly. The following section discusses the political implications of such an approach to value production.

Politics of value in the green transition

To demonstrate the political stakes of the analysis, in the following, I discuss the political structuring of the GreenFund valorization chain, debate the potential implications of value production through revenue for the ecological transition, and discuss political room for maneuver.

GreenFund explicitly operates with an ecological sustainability focus, codified through the European Green Deal and through negotiations with StateFund. From a governance perspective, GreenFund falls under the EU's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), a EGD transparency framework designed to classify financial products by their degree of sustainability orientation. To be more attractive for capital providers, in particular state funds, GreenInvest decided to comply with the strictest SFDR classification, Article 9, committing to achieving positive sustainability impacts while monitoring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria and avoiding adverse effects, referred to as Principal Adverse Impacts (PAIs). Specifically, GreenFund prioritizes the decarbonization impact derived from the products and services of its portfolio companies. Next to this regulatory value regime, sustainability is codified in GreenFund's value model through negotiations with StateFund. Notably, 30% of its carry is contingent upon its decarbonization impact. This linking of payout to impact underscores the ability of political actors to integrate non-financial values into the valorization chain, and structure it in an ecologically beneficial way.

Both attempts at political structuring engrain decarbonization into value production. Thus, the question follows: how is GreenInvest able to produce value through decarbonization? On the one hand, according to the interviewees, the definition and calculation of the specific indicators to measure decarbonization are largely left to GreenInvest, making a strict measurement and enforcement through StateFund unlikely. On the other hand, in the IM and questionnaire, GreenInvest links impact to scale, arguing that decarbonization requires “large numbers”, otherwise “even the most impactful and innovative solution will not matter”. This prepares the ground for the revenue-centered value production, explored above. Their focus is on software firms, such as GreenPlatform, which, according to the IM, drives decarbonization “without costly updates to the infrastructure”. To strengthen this argument, GreenInvest draws on classifications and predictions. Specifically, they quote a study, which finds existing technologies to be able to contribute two-thirds to reaching net zero if (unspecified) policy changes and new business models are implemented. Hence, the argument goes, GreenInvest can marry “attractive financial and decarbonization returns” by funding scalable business models rather than new tech. In summary, the centrality of revenue growth thus also shapes the valorization of decarbonization.

Importantly, this exploratory analysis shows how the current politics of value shape the socio-technical conditions of possibility for a green transition in a way that effectively maintains a logic of more of the same. Those businesses receive funding, which offer scalable “solutions”, often marketplaces, which allegedly drive ecological goals, such as decarbonization, without changing the underlying infrastructure. It is worth noting that this funding is, as the analysis shows, often indirectly provided by public agencies through derisking initiatives. At the same time, the analysis sheds light on policymakers’ ability to initiate a pragmatic shift in value regime through the use of conditionality and regulation.

Conclusion

This commentary shows how value production is relational, constituted by the negotiation of the commensurability between different economic forms, that is, through acts of translation. In the case study explored in this essay, I demonstrate how the platform companies’ valorization of data relates to revenue, which underwrites the value of the fund-asset. The analyzed dynamic comes with political stakes. Concretely, I demonstrate how the centrality of revenue also shapes the socio-technical conditions of the ecological transition in platform economies. Thus, the case study nuances the established story of green capitalism, whereby a universal capitalist logic determines ecological projects. By highlighting the concrete acts of translation, the analysis also reveals how policymakers shift value regimes through the negotiation of conditionality and financial regulation. So far, GreenInvest manages to subordinate these political attempts at structuring the chain to their value production through data-asset driven revenue. This continued centrality of revenue structures ecological transition in such a way as to focus on scalable business models, rather than on the development of new technology or the changing of the actual infrastructure, e.g. concerning energy provision.

Overall, the valorization chain embeds platform economies in the political economy without losing a pragmatist focus on concrete processes, relations, and practices. This approach shows how value production and the surrounding politics are a central locus of struggles for transformation as they structure the conditions of possibility for ecological transition. This opens a conversation about the role of power struggles around value in transforming economies more broadly, for instance in the increasing militarization and securitization of platform economies.