Extreme Lab Lock-In: Frontier Labs Hoarding Best Models May Be the Underpriced Endgame
abhiadesai · x · 2026-09-18
abhiadesai argues 'extreme lab lock-in' is the underpriced endgame: imagine every vertical where the open-model competitor runs on a base model only 1/10th as good, because frontier labs save the best for themselves and only distill subpar models outward.
The mechanism: enterprise purchasing decisions become easy to play out, and labs dogfooding their own models churn out vertical-specific products at an accelerating clip. Referencing Mauboussin's analysis of equity-market concentration, he suggests the end state may be one or two businesses plus their inputs — an outcome that is both underpriced and very hard to compete against.
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