5 ms·

What is OpenAI's moat? There's plenty of competitors running their own models and tools. Sure, they have the ChatGPT name, but I don't see them massively out-co

What is OpenAI's moat? There's plenty of competitors running their own models and tools. Sure, they have the ChatGPT name, but I don't see them massively out-competing the entire market unless the future model changes drastically improve over the 3->4->5 trajectory.

_e8at 1y ago
It's Sam. From what I understand he was the only one crazy enough to demand hundreds of GPUs for months to get ChatGPT going. Which at the time sounded crazy. So yeah Sam is the guy with the guts and vision to stay ahead.
- croes 1y ago
  OpenAI isn't ahead
  - redman25 1y ago
    It is in terms of users. There's a lot of sticking power to "the thing you already know and use".
    - no_wizard 1y ago
      Unless there is little friction in switching. I don’t feel any of the LLM products have a sticky factor as of yet, as far as viewing it from a consumer lens
    - Keyframe 1y ago
      Probably consumers. Enterprise is Anthropic, double ahead: https://menlovc.com/perspective/2025-mid-year-llm-market-update/ https://menlovc.com/perspective/2025-mid-year-llm-market-upd... note that menlo is invested in anthropic, but still..
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  Past performance is no guarantee of future results. You might see Sam as a Midas who can turn anything into gold. But history shows that very few people sustain that pattern.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  The shitcoin-in-return-for-your-iris-scans guy?
- bix6 1y ago
  Ignoring Sutskever much?
bcrl 1y ago
This! The cost of training models inevitably goes down over time as FLOPS/$ and PB/$ increases relentlessly thanks to the exponential gains of Moore's law. Eventually we will end up with laptops and phones being Good Enough to run models locally. Once that happens, any competitor in the space that decides to actively support running locally will have operating costs that are a mere fraction of OpenAI's current business. The pop of this bubble is going to be painful for a lot of people. Being too early to a market is just as bad as being too late, especially for something that can become a commodity due to a lack of moat.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  You just said that everyone will be able to run a powerful AI locally and then you said this would lead to a pop of the bubble. Well, which is it? That AI is going to have huge demands for chips that it is going to get much bigger or is the bubble going to pop? You can’t have both. My opinion is that local LLMs will do a bulk of the low value interference such as your personal life mundane tasks. But cloud AI will be reserved for work and for advanced research purposes.
  - bcrl 1y ago
    Just because a bubble pops on the economic front doesn't mean the sector goes away. Pets.com went bust a mere 10 months after going public, yet we're buying all kinds of products online in 2025 that we weren't in 2000. A bubble popping is about the disconnect between the forward looking assumptions about profitability by the early adopters in the space versus the actual returns once the speculation settles down and is replaced by hard data.
    - aurareturn 1y ago
      If it pops and then people underestimated the impact of the technology even at the peak, was it really a bubble?
- muskyFelon 1y ago
  Bad news on the Moore's Law front. https://cap.csail.mit.edu/death-moores-law-what-it-means-and-what-might-fill-gap-going-forward https://cap.csail.mit.edu/death-moores-law-what-it-means-and...
fzzzy 1y ago
brand recognition
nojs 1y ago
It feels similar to Google to me - what is (was) their moat? Basically slightly better results and strong brand recognition. In the later days maybe privileged data access. But why does nobody use Bing?
- zdragnar 1y ago
  Google got a massive leg up on the rest be having a better service. When Bing first came out, I was not impressed with what I got, and never really bothered going back to it. Search quality isn't what it used to be, but the inertia is still paying dividends. That same inertia also applied to Google ads. I'm not nearly so convinced OpenAI has the same leg up with ChatGPT. ChatGPT hasn't become a verb quite like google or Kleenex, and it isn't an indispensable part of a product.
  - typpilol 1y ago
    I actually find bing better now for more technical searches. Most technical Google searches end up at win fourms or official Microsoft support site which is basically just telling you that running sfc scannow for everything is the fix.
    - 6031769 1y ago
      If you are ending up at win forums or Microsoft's support site then the chances are that you were searching for something Microsofty in the first place. And if that's the case then it's hardly surprising that Microsoft's own search engine is better for promoting Microsoft-related responses than any other. Try searching for something technical which isn't MS-specific. That should be a more neutral test.
      - typpilol 1y ago
        You're not wrong. I've been doing all of windows server (eww) work lately
- balder1991 1y ago

_e8at 1y ago

It's Sam. From what I understand he was the only one crazy enough to demand hundreds of GPUs for months to get ChatGPT going. Which at the time sounded crazy. So yeah Sam is the guy with the guts and vision to stay ahead.

croes 1y ago
OpenAI isn't ahead
- redman25 1y ago
  It is in terms of users. There's a lot of sticking power to "the thing you already know and use".
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    Unless there is little friction in switching. I don’t feel any of the LLM products have a sticky factor as of yet, as far as viewing it from a consumer lens
  - Keyframe 1y ago
    Probably consumers. Enterprise is Anthropic, double ahead: https://menlovc.com/perspective/2025-mid-year-llm-market-update/ https://menlovc.com/perspective/2025-mid-year-llm-market-upd... note that menlo is invested in anthropic, but still..
shermantanktop 1y ago
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. You might see Sam as a Midas who can turn anything into gold. But history shows that very few people sustain that pattern.
exasperaited 1y ago
The shitcoin-in-return-for-your-iris-scans guy?
bix6 1y ago
Ignoring Sutskever much?

bcrl 1y ago

This! The cost of training models inevitably goes down over time as FLOPS/$ and PB/$ increases relentlessly thanks to the exponential gains of Moore's law. Eventually we will end up with laptops and phones being Good Enough to run models locally. Once that happens, any competitor in the space that decides to actively support running locally will have operating costs that are a mere fraction of OpenAI's current business. The pop of this bubble is going to be painful for a lot of people. Being too early to a market is just as bad as being too late, especially for something that can become a commodity due to a lack of moat.

aurareturn 1y ago
You just said that everyone will be able to run a powerful AI locally and then you said this would lead to a pop of the bubble. Well, which is it? That AI is going to have huge demands for chips that it is going to get much bigger or is the bubble going to pop? You can’t have both. My opinion is that local LLMs will do a bulk of the low value interference such as your personal life mundane tasks. But cloud AI will be reserved for work and for advanced research purposes.
- bcrl 1y ago
  Just because a bubble pops on the economic front doesn't mean the sector goes away. Pets.com went bust a mere 10 months after going public, yet we're buying all kinds of products online in 2025 that we weren't in 2000. A bubble popping is about the disconnect between the forward looking assumptions about profitability by the early adopters in the space versus the actual returns once the speculation settles down and is replaced by hard data.
  - aurareturn 1y ago
    If it pops and then people underestimated the impact of the technology even at the peak, was it really a bubble?
muskyFelon 1y ago
Bad news on the Moore's Law front. https://cap.csail.mit.edu/death-moores-law-what-it-means-and-what-might-fill-gap-going-forward https://cap.csail.mit.edu/death-moores-law-what-it-means-and...

fzzzy 1y ago

brand recognition

nojs 1y ago

It feels similar to Google to me - what is (was) their moat? Basically slightly better results and strong brand recognition. In the later days maybe privileged data access. But why does nobody use Bing?

zdragnar 1y ago
Google got a massive leg up on the rest be having a better service. When Bing first came out, I was not impressed with what I got, and never really bothered going back to it. Search quality isn't what it used to be, but the inertia is still paying dividends. That same inertia also applied to Google ads. I'm not nearly so convinced OpenAI has the same leg up with ChatGPT. ChatGPT hasn't become a verb quite like google or Kleenex, and it isn't an indispensable part of a product.
- typpilol 1y ago
  I actually find bing better now for more technical searches. Most technical Google searches end up at win fourms or official Microsoft support site which is basically just telling you that running sfc scannow for everything is the fix.
  - 6031769 1y ago
    If you are ending up at win forums or Microsoft's support site then the chances are that you were searching for something Microsofty in the first place. And if that's the case then it's hardly surprising that Microsoft's own search engine is better for promoting Microsoft-related responses than any other. Try searching for something technical which isn't MS-specific. That should be a more neutral test.
    - typpilol 1y ago
      You're not wrong. I've been doing all of windows server (eww) work lately
balder1991 1y ago