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How will OpenAI compete?

ben-evans.com

171–180 of 693 posts

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#171

Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue. My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable tha…

Google has bigger network effect. It can stomp OpenAI

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#172
post #24

I think this take underestimates a couple points: 1) the opportunities for vertical integration are huge. Anthropic originally said they didn’t want to build IDEs, then realized the pivot to Claude Code was available to them. Likewise when one of these companies can gobble up Legal, Medical, etc why would they let companies like Harvey capture the margins? 2) oss models are 6-12 months behind the frontier because of…

If OSS models are 6-12 months behind, it means sometime during 2026, we'll see a model that is on par with the likes of GPT 5.2/Opus 4.5.

For code generation specifically, the performance level of this is going to be more than enough for this customer base. What does Anthropic do then to justify $200/mo price sticker? Better model? Just how much better? Better tools? Single company can't compete with the tools entire OSS can produce.

I would be unable to sleep if I was running OAI / Anthropic.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#174

People underestimate the lead OAI has with their post-5.2 models. The author does not strike me as someone who closely follows the progress frontier labs make in US and around the world.

Agreed, compare the frontier models from Google and OAI. It’s like night and day. Anyone who says “the tech has caught up” has not spent even one day using Gemini 3.1 to try and accomplish something complicated.

I think the vast majority of coding us done through claude and gemini

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#175
post #79

Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue. My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable tha…

Yup this is just another case of the HN bubble. I polled a bunch of non technical friends recently who I know use AI on a daily basis. Out of 10+ maybe 2 had ever heard of Claude, and no one had any interest in trying it. ChapGPT has become the AI verb, and in the consumer space it is not getting dethroned.

Claude is definitely tech only.

Gemini is the only real competitor to OpenAI in the consumer space: they already have the consumer eyes on their products and they have the financials to operate at a loss for years.

They are well positioned to fight for the market

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#176
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would literally take you 5 mins to set up your wife with a competing client for her needs. Sure it's 'sticky' at least a little, but it's not a moat. A moat is a show stopper like they own you.

Just like it would take 10 seconds to buy her a Pepsi instead of her preferred Coke. Would you?

10 seconds to buy my wife a Pepsi? Why that estimate seems quite absurd.

First I would have to walk 10 miles into town. Then I would have to locate a purveyor of goods that carried Pepsi-Cola products...

Then I reckon we would spend a fort-minute dickering over price.

And finally trudging back home with my Pepsi product in tow.

Why, I'd be lucky to accomplish this herculean task in the very same evening.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#177
post #24

I think this take underestimates a couple points: 1) the opportunities for vertical integration are huge. Anthropic originally said they didn’t want to build IDEs, then realized the pivot to Claude Code was available to them. Likewise when one of these companies can gobble up Legal, Medical, etc why would they let companies like Harvey capture the margins? 2) oss models are 6-12 months behind the frontier because of…

The question is always about performance plateau. If LLM performance plateaus, then OSS models will catch up. If there isn’t a plateau, then I can simply ask the super intelligent AI to distill itself, or tell me how to build a clone. It’s ironic, if the promise of AGI were realized, all knowledge companies, including AI companies, become worthless

LLM performance has already plateaued. I don't know, nor care what benchmarks are saying, because they not once translated to the real world for me.

The only thing that has seen massive boost are harnesses around AI. And AI companies are behind here compared to OSS.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#178

I just wonder how long it'll take local models to be good enough for 99% of use cases. It seems like it has to happen sooner or later. My hunch is that in five years we'll look back and see current OpenAI as something like a 1970's VAX system. Once PCs could do most of what they could, nobody wanted a VAX anymore. I have a hard time imagining that all the big players today will survive that shift. (And if that partic…

Yesterday I asked mistral to list five mammals that don't have "e" in their name. Number three was "otter" and number five was "camel".

phi4-mini-reasoning took the same prompt and bailed out because (at least according to its trace) it interpreted it as meaning "can't have a, e, i, o, or u in the name".

Local is the only inference paradigm I'm interested in, but these things have a way to go.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#179

Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue. My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable tha…

ChatGPT has a good name. It's weird and awkward but it still rolls off the tongue. And I am saying that as a non native English speaker because the name has been migrated to other languages with the English pronunciation.

In comparison, Claude's name is very bad, it just doesn't sound right and people might mishear me when I say it. I never say "Claude" when talking to other, especially non-technical people, and instead say "ChatGPT" even though I am using Claude exclusively.

Google has another problem - they advertise their models as separate products. There is Gemini and there is Nano Banana, also Nano Banana Pro. But they are all somehow under the same product which is still called Gemini. I understand the distinction but I am sure many non-technical people find it confusing.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#180

Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue. My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable tha…

I hear the claim that people already have their conversation on ChatGPT and can't move them. I'm curious, what are these discussions like? I've never continued an old discussion, I just start a new one every time I have a question. If the discussion is long, I often start a new chat to get a blank slate. My experience is that the chat history just causes confusion.

So I'm curious to understand: What are the discussions like that people go back to and would lose if they moved to another platform?

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