Transforming business models across digital platforms: Exploring the role of artificial intelligence

The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital platforms is reconfiguring how organizations create, deliver, and capture value. As platform-based business models proliferate across industries, AI introduces new mechanisms of learning, data-driven value creation, and ecosystem evolution within two-sided and multi-sided platforms. This special issue assembles eight studies that examine AI-enabled platform business model innovation from diverse theoretical, methodological, and sectoral perspectives, including agri-food sustainability, semiconductor manufacturing, ESG rating platforms, open-source ecosystems, B2B platforms, global innovation dynamics, entertainment industry leadership, and blockchain-enabled decentralized systems. This editorial situates these contributions within the broader research trajectory on digital transformation and platform thinking and develops a structured synthesis that highlights recurring patterns across studies. Building on this synthesis, it proposes an integrative conceptual Framework for AI-driven Platform Business Model Transformation, conceptualizing the dynamic alignment and co-evolution among AI roles, platform configurations, and value creation mechanisms. In particular, the framework advances a processual understanding of platform transformation and identifies data externalities as central driver of learning-based value creation. Finally, the editorial outlines a future research agenda grounded in the insights of the special issue, emphasizing the need for further investigation of co-evolutionary dynamics, governance mechanisms, and the theoretical and methodological approaches required to explain AI-enabled platform innovation.