[nxobject]

> AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit.

That might be true in tech-savvy industries -- but in non-tech industries where the biggest software purchase might be the office suite or the ERP, inertia means the GSuite shops stick with Gemini, and the Exchange/Office 365 shops stick with Copilot.

[vlark]

I tend to agree with this sentiment. I'm not in the tech sector. As an outsider, it seems to me that OpenAI and Anthropic are chasing government and the defense industry as their main clients. Google and Microsoft are chasing business clients and educational institutions. Amazon and Apple are chasing consumers.

[dgellow]

Isn’t Anthropic literally flagged as a supply chain threat?

[8note]

in the US only insofar as they wont let claude decide who to kill.

from a non-US perspective yes, but so are the rest of the major providers

[dgellow]

No, what I mean is that the pentagon is still labeling anthropic a supply chain risk, meaning it shouldn’t be used for government contract work and anything military related. I don’t see how they can have a strong presence in the defense sector when that’s the case

[lwkl]

At least from some smaller marketing companies I know that isn't necessarily true. They often have Gemini or Copilot and Claude nowadays and before Claude it was ChatGPT.

The moat is way smaller than with Office or Gsuite because they feed data into the chat interface and it gives them an answer. The moat for Gsuite and Office is higher because you have to move all your data and reorganize it. Oh and everyone has to learn how to use the new software clients.

[bg24]

There is a time window when it will flip. When Internet came along, we had a number of businesses that did not survive over the next years.

This time, it is different with AI. The rate of change is significant.

[fvwqcecvq]

Just out of curiosity, what is the change and how are you measuring its rate?

From no internet to internet the change is pretty profound. But my job is already very automated for the most part. It's true AI might automate it a bit more, but it's not like I'm going from zero automation to full on automation. That's not nothing, and it is worth something, but it's also not internet from no internet level of change either.

[dgellow]

Copilot isn’t a model per se, no? It’s a harness that can use any model that supports tool calls from what I understand. It’s the way Microsoft commoditize ai models

[rootusrootus]

Another casualty of Microsoft using Copilot to describe so many different things.

[dgellow]

Actually surprising that windows hasn’t been renamed CopilotWorkbench yet

[MilkAtYC]

Agreed, the common Joe isn't switching the second Anthropic drops a new SOTA

[mathisfun123]

I think you don't understand moat - that's not a moat.

[sweetjuly]

The trick is antitrust style bundling. The massive pile of documents and processes tied to GSuite is a moat which makes it hard to switch to something like o365. Since a company might effectively be locked into GSuite (the primary product), if Google forces companies to buy Gemini (the secondary product) by bundling it with GSuite, they've given themselves a moat in the LLM space using their document/email moat from GSuite.

This is essentially what Google has done, and it's a shame the US is so weak on enforcing antitrust laws.

[dgellow]

It can be if it’s really sticky. But I don’t think ai models themselves will ever be sticky, the harnesses might be. But there is very little money to make in the harness itself, and they are also very easy to copy, so yeah, no moat