LLM Investments Are Nearly Impossible to Protect as Moats
burkov · x · 2026-07-18
The author argues that investments in the LLM era are incredibly hard to truly protect. Wealthy backers provide funding, researchers turn that capital into better models, and then the community continues to improve the results through distillation and open-source research.
The core takeaway is that no other technology is as easily reused, distilled, and continuously iterated upon as large language models, meaning these investments will naturally spill over to benefit the entire industry.
Related event: Opinion: LLM Investments Struggle to Build Moats(2 posts)→
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