Precisely how is OpenAI eating anyone's lunch? This is a serious question. Is OpenAI fantastically profitable? Does it have a proprietary moat that changes its margins in a way that no other competitor can overcome? Does it benefit from network effects that lead to a natural monopoly?
From my mole's eye view I see a raft of "use AI on task X" applications that are incremental improvements on the underlying products, not game-changing products themselves. I also see insane equity valuations, which look more like Gilded Age railroad speculation than actual proof it's different this time. [0]
Don't get me wrong. LLMs have some pretty amazing capabilities. The fact that they can perform what appears to be reasoning on huge pools of data is fascinating. But it seems premature to say that anyone has won here.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/robber-baron-gamble-r...