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How will OpenAI compete?

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Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#581

Post by matchagaucho »

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…

These articles are largely based on a false equivalence of LLM=moat.

That's not the case. OpenAI is advancing on many fronts; codex, vectorStore, embeddings, response API, containers, batch processing, voice-to-speech, image generation... the list goes on.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#582

Post by swexbe »

boxedemp wrote: post #47
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…

My sister uses Gemini and calls it chat gpt. It's becoming a genericide.

OpenAIs investors can look forward to having an operating margin as impressive as the company that produces Band-Aid

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#583

Post by jjfoooo4 »

Havoc wrote: post #303
daxfohl wrote: post #130

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…

Think a large portion of people won’t take “good enough” if better is available for cheaper. Datacenters simply scale better than homesevers on cost and performance So only really works for people that value local highly - which isn’t most people.

Why would we assume the remote providers are going to be cheaper? They are burning cash, and Claude is already jacking up prices.

"Local" is the means to an end, not the value prop itself. The value prop is "fast, private, and free", which I think is going to be very compelling.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#584

Post by nozzlegear »

bigyabai wrote: post #578
nozzlegear wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The overwhelming volume of Apples sales comes from people who wouldn't notice if their device was running 2016 level hardware. How could we possibly know this? This is just an argument from elitism, as though the plebes should be happy playing Farmville on their gateway computers, while us haughty developers sit in our ivory towers and herald in the end of the anthropocene using machines we can actually appreciate.

> How could we possibly know this? They make a good point. Apple's most-popular device is a smartphone that doesn't handle workloads any heavier than Snapchat or Instagram. The value prop of the iPhone is not rooted in the performance or battery life (as Liquid Glass showed us) but just the branding. Apple makes more money selling iPhone accessories than they make selling Macs. The desktop market share isn't going up…

> They make a good point. Apple's most-popular device is a smartphone that doesn't handle workloads any heavier than Snapchat or Instagram. The value prop of the iPhone is not rooted in the performance or battery life (as Liquid Glass showed us) but just the branding.

It's not a good point, it's an assumption based on elitism, just like your assumption that nobody is doing anything other than Snapchat or Instagram on their phones, or that they're only buying an iPhone because of the branding and not also the performance and battery life. In your head, what do you think the average iPhone user looks like? Are they drooling simpletons?

> Apple makes more money selling iPhone accessories than they make selling Macs. You look at the desktop market share in 2026 and it's very apparent that the Mac's regular upgrade cycle is driving Apple's sales, not direct competition: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

What point are you trying to make here? People like the iPhone, the iPhone makes a shitload of money, so therefore people who have Macs don't appreciate the hardware? Or what?

Also, StatCounter is not an accurate website:

https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_n...

https://daringfireball.net/2026/02/apple_releases_ios_26_ado...

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#585

Post by fuzzfactor »

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…

To the extent that it is a popularity contest, that's one thing.

Of course the first thing people may look at is technologies going head-to-head.

Another big one is user pricing, plus the underlying cost to serve users. Actually minus that cost.

Biggest so far is capital.

Seems to be going that way, a contest of capital could dominate like so many other things regardless of technologies.

There are probably other things that companies may leverage if competition does really ramp up.

It may not have to be a moat to be a defining characteristic that some prefer.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#586

Post by mvkel »

daxfohl wrote: post #130

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…

Convenience trumps everything, including privacy and security.

Tell the average person that they have to install their own model is a deal breaker at the outset.

As for 99% capabilities being on device, battery life makes it a non starter.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#587

Post by swexbe »

famouswaffles wrote: post #445
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that kind of inertia mostly lasts as long as there is no financial incentive to move. A ChatGPT user who is not paying anything to OpenAI is of little benefit to them, and has little incentive to switch. However if OpenAI start trying to make money off those users by adding advertising, or removing the free tier, then things may change. Google can afford to subsidize chat from their other revenue streams, but…

>However if OpenAI start trying to make money off those users by adding advertising, or removing the free tier, then things may change. Tech forums tend to be in a bit of a bubble. People said the same thing about Netflix and it just quickly became their most popular sub. People don't care about advertising unless it's really obnoxious. The idea that people will unsub en masse once Open AI starts rolling ads is a pip…

Customers come back to Netflix since they have the best content out of all the streaming providers. This is their moat.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, is literally exactly identical to their competitors for the most common use cases.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#588

Post by vaylian »

tantalor wrote: post #538
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…

My wife, for example, uses [Netscape Navigator] 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 [bookmarks] on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. See how stupid it sounds?

Given how long people have stuck with Internet Explorer, I don't think this is a good example.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#589

Post by otagekki »

christophilus wrote: post #373
mgaunard wrote: post #312

As far as I can tell Google Gemini has the best overall integrations (Android, WearOS, Google Home) with the only voice recognition that actually works (Gemini Live). Anthropic Claude has the best integrations with coding; what would make sense is for them to focus on that segment. Other AI companies don't have anything really compelling. Meta has a model that's fully open-source, but then that's not particularly use…

I’m not sure. I started using Codex last week. Codex, at $20/mo is a very good value.

Indeed! For now let's enjoy it as much as we can. The VC-subsidized price of $20 won't last eternally I'm afraid

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#590

Post by bigyabai »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #580
bigyabai wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could we possibly know this? They make a good point. Apple's most-popular device is a smartphone that doesn't handle workloads any heavier than Snapchat or Instagram. The value prop of the iPhone is not rooted in the performance or battery life (as Liquid Glass showed us) but just the branding. Apple makes more money selling iPhone accessories than they make selling Macs. The desktop market share isn't going up…

iPhones are some sci-fi magic computers. It's incredible how powerful they are. Most smartphones are.

Be that as it may, I can guarantee you with complete confidence that 90% of iPhone owners are not engaged in heavy workloads.

The overwhelming majority of people just don't notice.

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