[alfalfasprout]

Yep. Trust is easy to lose, hard to earn. A nondeterministic black box that is likely buggy, will almost certainly change, and has a likelihood of getting enshittified is not a very good value proposition to build on top of or invest in.

Increasingly, we're also seeing the moat shrink somewhat. Frontier models are converging in performance (and I bet even Mythos will get matched) and harnesses are improving too across the board (OpenCode and Codex for example).

I get why they're trying to do that (a perception of a moat bloats the IPO price) but I have little faith there's any real moat at all (especially as competitors are still flush with cash).

[dsf2aa]

I think in the long-term open source models will be enough and a handful of firms will figure out how to use them at scale to generate immense cash flows. It is in China's interest that America does not have more healthy going-concerns that generate tens of billions in cash flows that are then reinvested to increase the gap in capabilities and have the rest of the world purchasing their offerings.

So yeah, doesn't bode well for being a pure play model producer.