4 ms·

How? OpenAI and Antrophic are basically the Big 2 racing away at light speed; the others who can't get near them are perhaps shaky & vulnerable. And sure, there

How? OpenAI and Antrophic are basically the Big 2 racing away at light speed; the others who can't get near them are perhaps shaky & vulnerable. And sure, there's a garden full of those.

cmiles8 5mo ago
Because the market almost certainly can’t support two foundation model labs given the increasingly little difference across models and the massive sums of cash required to keep it all going. There is no big 2, just a race to survive and be the big 1.
- solenoid0937 5mo ago
  Disagree, both are coexisting fine today.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - claytongulick 5mo ago
    A series "H" for $65 billion and no path to profitability is existing fine?
    - solenoid0937 5mo ago
      Sure, if you think there is even a small chance that OpenAI and Anthropic will get to AGI, it's practically a bargain. They don't seem too far off to me.
    - conradkay 5mo ago
      https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-says-its-about-to-have-its-first-profitable-quarter/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-says-its-about-t...
      - claytongulick 5mo ago
        https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle...
        conradkay 5mo ago
        Yeah it's very murky, but if they're arguably profitable under some definition of profitable, then it's ridiculous to claim there's "no path to profitability" Especially if you assume that 6 months ago they weren't very close to this version of profitable
- an0malous 5mo ago
  It probably can't support any because there's no moat and smaller, open source models are catching up. This is like investing $1T into mainframe computers in 1980.
- dchftcs 5mo ago
  China will make sure they have a frontier lab, there's plenty of chance for Google to catch up once the compute crunch gets more serious.
  - TacticalCoder 5mo ago
    Google needs to catch up on what? Devs mindshare? The latest Opus 4.8 carefully selected benchmarks made sure to pick Gemini 3.1 Pro and not Gemini 3.5 Flash: 3.5 Flash is beating Opus 4.8 on several of the benchmarks Anthropic posted but simply was ignored. I don't think SOTA-wise Google has a lot of catch up to do.
    - dchftcs 5mo ago
      Gemini 3.5 Flash is not good at coding in practice. Gemini 3.1 Pro too, in particular is known to be bad at tool calls. Many companies would love to have alternatives to Claude Code (as it's a significant risk to depend on one vendor), so far most of the buzz is about moving to Codex but much fewer talk about moving to Gemini. All these benchmarks are not very informative, the Chinese labs do better on these benchmarks than in practice, for example.
- watwut 5mo ago
  If it cant support two competing compamies, something is very wrong. Oligopoly is bad, monopoly worst. Well functioning market is supposed to have many, as in a lot, companies with similar products. To create competition.
- dotcoma 5mo ago
  isn't Google going to win the race anyway ?
  - conradkay 5mo ago
    That feels really hard to argue now that Anthropic/OpenAI are so much bigger How the hell do you crush a ~1T company on the one thing they have all their focus on?
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - dotcoma 5mo ago
      You start with a 90% share in search, I guess. Me, not a SWE, I have never even tried Claude (and I am not sure I prefer ChatGPT over Google)
    - SXX 5mo ago
      Data. Google has access to unphasmable amount of real human-created data with zero expectations of privacy (wink wink Apple): videos, photos, search, navigation, mobile app usage including competition platforms, emails, etc. Both Anthropic and OpenAI only has access to whatever they can buy or steal. And it's becoming increasingly hard to get fresh uncontaminated data for training. No amount of money can buy that.
      - conradkay 5mo ago
        I suspect it's less true now that synthetic data has worked so well, and multimodal doesn't seem to transfer as well as many would've hoped Claude Code and Codex are a big advantage, vs Gemini CLI which might be killedbygoogle soon? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196867 > Both Anthropic and OpenAI only has access to whatever they can buy or steal. A trillion can buy you quite a lot! Like offer some company a ton of money for data, and if they say no simply buy said company. Bonus points if it's someone like Atlassian who's stock price is getting hammered largely because of you.
- treis 5mo ago
  There's at least two markets here. Consumer ad driven and worker augmentation markets. Likely a 3rd as a backend infrastructure provider to a bunch of value add companies. I think Google has caught up enough to certainly be a player in the consumer ad driven market. I also don't think only one foundation model adds up. Now that the trail is blazed a dozen companies can likely make a good enough model. The question is if there's a moat to make it winner take all
andriy_koval 5mo ago
Google likely has its market share too, you can track how fast Cloud revenue increased.
- decimalenough 5mo ago
  It's a gold rush and Google is both selling shovels and digging for gold itself.
dbbk 5mo ago
Google is the present winner, they're beating everyone else

How? OpenAI and Antrophic are basically the Big 2 racing away at light speed; the others who can't get near them are perhaps shaky & vulnerable. And sure, there's a garden full of those.

cmiles8 5mo ago

Because the market almost certainly can’t support two foundation model labs given the increasingly little difference across models and the massive sums of cash required to keep it all going. There is no big 2, just a race to survive and be the big 1.

solenoid0937 5mo ago
Disagree, both are coexisting fine today.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- claytongulick 5mo ago
  A series "H" for $65 billion and no path to profitability is existing fine?
  - solenoid0937 5mo ago
    Sure, if you think there is even a small chance that OpenAI and Anthropic will get to AGI, it's practically a bargain. They don't seem too far off to me.
  - conradkay 5mo ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-says-its-about-to-have-its-first-profitable-quarter/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-says-its-about-t...
    - claytongulick 5mo ago
      https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle...
      - conradkay 5mo ago
        Yeah it's very murky, but if they're arguably profitable under some definition of profitable, then it's ridiculous to claim there's "no path to profitability" Especially if you assume that 6 months ago they weren't very close to this version of profitable
an0malous 5mo ago
It probably can't support any because there's no moat and smaller, open source models are catching up. This is like investing $1T into mainframe computers in 1980.
dchftcs 5mo ago
China will make sure they have a frontier lab, there's plenty of chance for Google to catch up once the compute crunch gets more serious.
- TacticalCoder 5mo ago
  Google needs to catch up on what? Devs mindshare? The latest Opus 4.8 carefully selected benchmarks made sure to pick Gemini 3.1 Pro and not Gemini 3.5 Flash: 3.5 Flash is beating Opus 4.8 on several of the benchmarks Anthropic posted but simply was ignored. I don't think SOTA-wise Google has a lot of catch up to do.
  - dchftcs 5mo ago
    Gemini 3.5 Flash is not good at coding in practice. Gemini 3.1 Pro too, in particular is known to be bad at tool calls. Many companies would love to have alternatives to Claude Code (as it's a significant risk to depend on one vendor), so far most of the buzz is about moving to Codex but much fewer talk about moving to Gemini. All these benchmarks are not very informative, the Chinese labs do better on these benchmarks than in practice, for example.
watwut 5mo ago
If it cant support two competing compamies, something is very wrong. Oligopoly is bad, monopoly worst. Well functioning market is supposed to have many, as in a lot, companies with similar products. To create competition.
dotcoma 5mo ago
isn't Google going to win the race anyway ?
- conradkay 5mo ago
  That feels really hard to argue now that Anthropic/OpenAI are so much bigger How the hell do you crush a ~1T company on the one thing they have all their focus on?
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - dotcoma 5mo ago
    You start with a 90% share in search, I guess. Me, not a SWE, I have never even tried Claude (and I am not sure I prefer ChatGPT over Google)
  - SXX 5mo ago
    Data. Google has access to unphasmable amount of real human-created data with zero expectations of privacy (wink wink Apple): videos, photos, search, navigation, mobile app usage including competition platforms, emails, etc. Both Anthropic and OpenAI only has access to whatever they can buy or steal. And it's becoming increasingly hard to get fresh uncontaminated data for training. No amount of money can buy that.
    - conradkay 5mo ago
      I suspect it's less true now that synthetic data has worked so well, and multimodal doesn't seem to transfer as well as many would've hoped Claude Code and Codex are a big advantage, vs Gemini CLI which might be killedbygoogle soon? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196867 > Both Anthropic and OpenAI only has access to whatever they can buy or steal. A trillion can buy you quite a lot! Like offer some company a ton of money for data, and if they say no simply buy said company. Bonus points if it's someone like Atlassian who's stock price is getting hammered largely because of you.
treis 5mo ago
There's at least two markets here. Consumer ad driven and worker augmentation markets. Likely a 3rd as a backend infrastructure provider to a bunch of value add companies. I think Google has caught up enough to certainly be a player in the consumer ad driven market. I also don't think only one foundation model adds up. Now that the trail is blazed a dozen companies can likely make a good enough model. The question is if there's a moat to make it winner take all

andriy_koval 5mo ago

Google likely has its market share too, you can track how fast Cloud revenue increased.

decimalenough 5mo ago
It's a gold rush and Google is both selling shovels and digging for gold itself.

dbbk 5mo ago

Google is the present winner, they're beating everyone else