> The real moat aren't the models, but the tooling around the models that allow them to perform specific tasks/goals. That's what really sets apart frontier vs open. Open only has the model itself, closed have the tooling to enhance the model.
replyAs these frontier companies have been boasting, writing software is now a negligible cost because the LLM can do it.
IOW, no, their software can't be a moat, because, according to their own arguments, you can use their LLM to trivially clone their software.
> you can use their LLM to trivially clone their software.
replyPerhaps, but what you can't clone is familiarity, polish, integration, and network effects. These companies desperately need a moat, and so for example all the new additions to Claude's web interface are becoming the products that the vast majority of people will use and be locked into (if it goes according to their plan).
If development is trivial and capability remains the differentiator, then "familiarity, polish, [and] integration" are non-issues.
replyI'm not sure what network effects even means in the context of llm selection.
I'm happier with my Opencode Go running with the pi harness than Claude Code at work currently. I'm not sure if this will be that big of a moat, at least in the software dev market.
replyunfortunately, for me, that's an anti-moat; their dark, inconcievable, alignment, random "no goblins" and inability to be reliable where their models are inevitable non-determinant means you're going to constantly run into the "this worked yesterday" problems, no matter how smart the models actually are; being filtered constantly through economics, political and ego-maniacal filters means everything you do with it will break at any given interval.
replygood luck.