OpenAI and Anthropic may face a moat problem as AI becomes a commodity
ctjlewis · x · 2026-07-23
The post argues that OpenAI and Anthropic could end up like CompuServe and AOL: important early players, but not necessarily durable winners.
Key points:
- Big tech firms like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and others can block or outcompete them.
- Model quality alone is not a moat; competitors such as Kimi, Grok and DeepSeek have shown that.
- Inference will likely become a commodity utility, which requires massive capex.
- The real control point may be the apps and OS layer, where OpenAI and Anthropic do not own distribution.
- The post closes by suggesting AI sovereignty will become an even bigger issue.
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