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How will OpenAI compete?

ben-evans.com

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Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#101

Post by dlev_pika »

> what a platform really achieves is to harness the creative energy of the entire tech industry, so that you don’t have to invent everything yourself and massively more stuff gets built at massive scale

I hear this, but every time I look the platforms have captured another use case that the startup ecosystem built (eg images, knowledge summarization, coding, music).

The sector is already littered with the corpses of the innovators that got swallowed by the platforms’ aggressiveness to do it all.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#102

Post by tcoff91 »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #95
keyle wrote: 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.

Idk, habit and the devil you know are powerful as hell. Google has enshittified search nearly beyond imagination, but it's still where the vastly overwhelming majority of people search.

What free search engine today performs significantly better? No seriously Google sucks and I want an alternative. Do I need to pay for Kagi to get decent search?

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#103

Post by lelanthran »

shubhamjain wrote: post #29

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…

> 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.

Is she paying for it? Because as we have seen repeatedly in the past, paid products whither and die when Microsoft bundles a default replacement.

You need to provide a really good reason why this time its different.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#104

Post by agentifysh »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #82

OpenAI lost the race to nerds' hearts. In the latest benchmarks, OpenAI is simultaneously cheaper (like 50% less?) and scores hire in coding and tool use benchmarks (GPT-5.3-Codex trounces Opus 4.6), yet all the coders want to marry Anthropic. I don't think OpenAI understands how to sell, if they even had a product to sell.

I'm not so sure about that. There's a lot of people that were turned off by Anthropic, especially with the weekly usage limits. that in comparison to Codex is on the last side. And actually Codex is one of the few products that I think OpenAI has executed really well on. there's just no real equivalent in terms of actual usage that you can get for the same amount of money. Gemini is great, but it seems to be still in a state of flux. Way too much products stretched too thin. Anthropic is also okay, but it's very limited in the weekly usage you can get out of it.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#105

Post by protocolture »

paxys wrote: post #84
arctic-true wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When OpenAI starts requiring a payment, or showing an ad before it starts translating, will they continue? Or will they use the Google Translate app, which can do this locally? (Or for that matter Gemini or Grok or whatever?)

“When Netflix starts showing ads who on earth will still use it?” Everyone, it turns out. Same with Google. Same with YouTube. Same with Instagram, and the rest of the web. Once people become dependent on ChatGPT (as they already are) watching a 30 second ad in the middle of a session will become second nature.

Netflix has a moat in the form of IP licensing restrictions.

Google and Youtube are preinstalled everywhere. Instagrams like 10 minutes old and has a major competitor in TikTok that they had to have eliminated/captured by the US government.

People wouldnt stay with Netflix if there was a cheap, legal alternative with the same content library.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#106

Post by esafak »

SecretDreams wrote: post #53
morkalork wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I commute on the train, I see students studying with it. I go for brunch on the weekend, I see parents consulting it while at the table with their infants. I'm at work, colleagues are using it all day. I leave work and I overhear the random woman smoking in the alleyway talking on her cellphone saying "so I asked chatgpt". It's mind-bogglingly pervasive, the last time something had such a seizmic cultural impact like…

Chatgpt is like "Jeep". My grandmother calls every suv a jeep. But they're not all jeeps. AI looks like chatgpt, but people are driving all sorts of different AIs. I would guess OAI has no moat or stickiness beyond what governments and private companies will do to keep it afloat through equity and circular financing. Good enough AI is all most need, and they need it at the cheapest cost basis possible with the most c…

And if you're Boris Johnson, it's pronounced like 'jeep' too!

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#107

Post by daxfohl »

One trillion capex per year? Does that mean they need everyone on the planet to get $100/yr subscriptions to stay solvent? Without a monopoly? Or a product that most people use much?

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#108

Post by wiredpancake »

chii wrote: post #83
simonw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think it's hilarious that a product name as awful as "ChatGPT" has become so ubiquitous. I wonder what percentage of its users know what the GPT stands for, or even thought about it for a second?

I mean, how is it any worse than 'google'? chatgpt is generic (as in, no prior meaning attached, except for the few people in the world who understand what GPT stands for). It's simple - even a non-english speaker can say it easily, and doesn't require one to be native to know how to pronounce it (this is a difficult concept for a native english speaker to grok). These features makes for a good name.

[dead]

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#109

Post by seizethecheese »

Great article, but I think this is a stretch: "nor does OpenAI have consumer products on top of the models themselves that have product-market fit."

I would argue chatgpt is in the top 10 products of all time with regard to product market fit.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#110

Post by XCSme »

simonw wrote: post #60
XCSme wrote: post #55

Same question for Atrophic. Personally I only see Google (Gemini), X (Grok) and the Chinese models having a chances to still be alive in 1-2 years.

Anthropic are making a very convincing play for business and "enterprise" customers - first with Claude Code and now with Cowork and especially Claude for Excel. The revenue growth they've announced has been extremely impressive over the past year.

Well, the public reception seems to be changing, after tweets like this: https://x.com/AnthropicAI/status/2025997928242811253

Also, I liked Anthropic because they were focused a lot on safety, but after the Pentagon stuff, it seems like they dropped their focus on safety.

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