3 ms·

Don't think it matters in the long run to be honest. The models have no moat, they are becoming a commodity. Besides that, Google is in a pretty good position,

Don't think it matters in the long run to be honest. The models have no moat, they are becoming a commodity. Besides that, Google is in a pretty good position, they're not bleeding money on AI like Anthropic/OpenAI, and they own product verticals where they can integrate it. Plus they have a mature ads-model which is what might actually drive a bit of revenue for LLMs.

root_axis 4mo ago
And they've had some initial success with TPUs which could be a major differentiator in the future.
- Insanity 4mo ago
  Yup, and they have the Apple partnership for now as well. Much better position generally than OpenAI in my opinion.
observationist 4mo ago
I don't think you're honestly accounting for the engineering behind the progress models are making. If it was just a matter of compute on hand and iterating, Meta would be neck and neck with Ant, OAI, and Google, but clearly you've gotta have more. Noam has a deep expertise in these systems at every level, both algorithmically and at production scale, and knows how to leverage things at different levels. It's not like Google won't have anyone else that can do what he does, but at the same time, it's an implicit criticism of Google's culture, operations, development, and overall AI program. Shazeer is well past the point where the paycheck is the deciding factor, although I'm certain he is very well paid. Having the freedom to innovate and build free from the corporate fuckery of Google and Facebook is probably more valuable than the pay raise he got with the move, and OAI has the advantage of not having to cope with decades of corporate cruft and inertia. They'll get there - all corporations do - but they're relatively young enough to still be nimble.
- Insanity 4mo ago
  I honestly don't think that matters for multiple reasons: 1. There are already multiple "sota" models on the market that compete with only marginal gains between them (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google/Gemini) and some that are catching up (DeepSeek, Qwen,..). 2. The fact that something is a hard engineering problem does not mean it's generating revenue. So while what you said is true, deep expertise is required to push the industry forward, I don't think that is going to matter for the bottom line of these companies. Hence why I think the models don't give a company any 'moat' in a capitalist economy.
- xyzsparetimexyz 4mo ago
  > Noam has a deep expertise in these systems at every level As do thousands of people say this point. You think the head of deepseek doesn't?
xnx 4mo ago
> models have no moat Possibly true. Any smart innovations developed by one organization will be smuggled into others. Training, inferring, and data collection, infrastructures are definitely moats. High-volume usage feedback is also hard to come by for new entrants.
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  And Google has all of those. Custom silicon, more data than anyone else and probably the most comprehensive data collection system, and phones in the hands of 73% of the global smartphone using population to push gemini into to get high volume usage feedback and even more telemetry and data.
maxdo 4mo ago
yeah, sure, look at anthropic revenue, what is it if not the moat? you can argue for how long but for them good model = the fastest growing company ever.
- rvnx 4mo ago
  Revenue is not a metric of success at all. Grabbing market-share if you have investors that are ready to burn cash infinetely. Find a hot niche, buy a banana 1 USD, sell it for 0.10 USD. Example: Cursor, they became popular because they were selling ChatGPT unlimited for 20 USD / month. When they launched, just a reskinned VS Code, "fastest growing AI company" No coincidence they were bought by SpaceX, who wants to consolidate revenue even if non-sense as long it helps other investors to exit. It shows rapid growth. Profit is the real moat. One example: Nvidia. Proprietary tooling, proprietary IP, proprietary hardware, no alternative, expensive.
  - signatoremo 4mo ago
    Revenue is moat. Ask Amazon. Or Alibaba. Or Temu. You don't know what Cursor's game plan was. Maybe acquisition was their plan. Buying at $1 and selling for $0.1 is still viable as long as they have money in the bank, until they achieve their goals. Most startups start out that way. Even giving away their services for free. Obviously there will be failures. Doesn't mean they have no moat. Can you say a business with 100 customers and $1000 debt is less viable than one with a single customer and no debt?
fourseventy 4mo ago
I think the 'models have no moat' thing is overblown. Only like 3-4 companies in the entire world have cutting edge models, that means there is some kind of moat...
- seydor 4mo ago
  money. but it eventually runs out
  - rvnx 4mo ago
    A little IPO is the solution. Don't we all want to (automatically) and passively invest in a company losing billions of dollars ? At least we can diversify our portfolio from SpaceX.
    - tcp_handshaker 4mo ago
      Pre-Quote: "We are all going to lose, hundreds of billions"
  - TiredOfLife 4mo ago
    Grok and Meta. Both have money and compute, both have shit models. Also Google. Has money, models not so good.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- rvnx 4mo ago
  Money. That's their moat. Maybe also stolen copyrighted content that cannot be found anywhere else now, so they are the only ones who can train on it.
  - gordonhart 4mo ago
    Meta has tons of that, but no frontier contender. Clearly there’s _something_ more to the equation than money
dabbz 4mo ago
I feel like the models have no moat paradigm died when a single model expanded past the memory of single GPU slices. The moat is hosting the model. Even paying a server host to run a rack of GPUs has immense upstart cost, and then you're still struggling to compete on the add-ons of the things on top of the model (prompts, validation loops, etc). You can only throw so much money at a problem.
- xyzsparetimexyz 4mo ago
  Many different companies host the open source models. Where's the moat there?
  - dabbz 4mo ago
    I mean you got me there. There will be places who do have the means to build up massive GPU servers. There's just a lot more to it and I don't know if we're going to pinpoint an exact catch-all moat.

root_axis 4mo ago

And they've had some initial success with TPUs which could be a major differentiator in the future.

Insanity 4mo ago
Yup, and they have the Apple partnership for now as well. Much better position generally than OpenAI in my opinion.

observationist 4mo ago

I don't think you're honestly accounting for the engineering behind the progress models are making. If it was just a matter of compute on hand and iterating, Meta would be neck and neck with Ant, OAI, and Google, but clearly you've gotta have more. Noam has a deep expertise in these systems at every level, both algorithmically and at production scale, and knows how to leverage things at different levels. It's not like Google won't have anyone else that can do what he does, but at the same time, it's an implicit criticism of Google's culture, operations, development, and overall AI program. Shazeer is well past the point where the paycheck is the deciding factor, although I'm certain he is very well paid. Having the freedom to innovate and build free from the corporate fuckery of Google and Facebook is probably more valuable than the pay raise he got with the move, and OAI has the advantage of not having to cope with decades of corporate cruft and inertia. They'll get there - all corporations do - but they're relatively young enough to still be nimble.

Insanity 4mo ago
I honestly don't think that matters for multiple reasons: 1. There are already multiple "sota" models on the market that compete with only marginal gains between them (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google/Gemini) and some that are catching up (DeepSeek, Qwen,..). 2. The fact that something is a hard engineering problem does not mean it's generating revenue. So while what you said is true, deep expertise is required to push the industry forward, I don't think that is going to matter for the bottom line of these companies. Hence why I think the models don't give a company any 'moat' in a capitalist economy.
xyzsparetimexyz 4mo ago
> Noam has a deep expertise in these systems at every level As do thousands of people say this point. You think the head of deepseek doesn't?

xnx 4mo ago

> models have no moat Possibly true. Any smart innovations developed by one organization will be smuggled into others. Training, inferring, and data collection, infrastructures are definitely moats. High-volume usage feedback is also hard to come by for new entrants.

thewebguyd 4mo ago
And Google has all of those. Custom silicon, more data than anyone else and probably the most comprehensive data collection system, and phones in the hands of 73% of the global smartphone using population to push gemini into to get high volume usage feedback and even more telemetry and data.

maxdo 4mo ago

yeah, sure, look at anthropic revenue, what is it if not the moat? you can argue for how long but for them good model = the fastest growing company ever.

rvnx 4mo ago
Revenue is not a metric of success at all. Grabbing market-share if you have investors that are ready to burn cash infinetely. Find a hot niche, buy a banana 1 USD, sell it for 0.10 USD. Example: Cursor, they became popular because they were selling ChatGPT unlimited for 20 USD / month. When they launched, just a reskinned VS Code, "fastest growing AI company" No coincidence they were bought by SpaceX, who wants to consolidate revenue even if non-sense as long it helps other investors to exit. It shows rapid growth. Profit is the real moat. One example: Nvidia. Proprietary tooling, proprietary IP, proprietary hardware, no alternative, expensive.
- signatoremo 4mo ago
  Revenue is moat. Ask Amazon. Or Alibaba. Or Temu. You don't know what Cursor's game plan was. Maybe acquisition was their plan. Buying at $1 and selling for $0.1 is still viable as long as they have money in the bank, until they achieve their goals. Most startups start out that way. Even giving away their services for free. Obviously there will be failures. Doesn't mean they have no moat. Can you say a business with 100 customers and $1000 debt is less viable than one with a single customer and no debt?

fourseventy 4mo ago

I think the 'models have no moat' thing is overblown. Only like 3-4 companies in the entire world have cutting edge models, that means there is some kind of moat...

seydor 4mo ago
money. but it eventually runs out
- rvnx 4mo ago
  A little IPO is the solution. Don't we all want to (automatically) and passively invest in a company losing billions of dollars ? At least we can diversify our portfolio from SpaceX.
  - tcp_handshaker 4mo ago
    Pre-Quote: "We are all going to lose, hundreds of billions"
- TiredOfLife 4mo ago
  Grok and Meta. Both have money and compute, both have shit models. Also Google. Has money, models not so good.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
rvnx 4mo ago
Money. That's their moat. Maybe also stolen copyrighted content that cannot be found anywhere else now, so they are the only ones who can train on it.
- gordonhart 4mo ago
  Meta has tons of that, but no frontier contender. Clearly there’s _something_ more to the equation than money

dabbz 4mo ago

I feel like the models have no moat paradigm died when a single model expanded past the memory of single GPU slices. The moat is hosting the model. Even paying a server host to run a rack of GPUs has immense upstart cost, and then you're still struggling to compete on the add-ons of the things on top of the model (prompts, validation loops, etc). You can only throw so much money at a problem.

xyzsparetimexyz 4mo ago
Many different companies host the open source models. Where's the moat there?
- dabbz 4mo ago
  I mean you got me there. There will be places who do have the means to build up massive GPU servers. There's just a lot more to it and I don't know if we're going to pinpoint an exact catch-all moat.