> As a result, OpenAI simply does not have a business model, even if they are trying to convince the world that they do.
They have a super popular subscription service. If they keep iterating on the product enough, they can lag on the models. The business is the product not the models and not the API. Subscriptions are pretty sticky when you start getting your data entrenched in it. I keep my ChatGPT subscription because it’s the best app on Mac and already started to “learn me” through the memory and tasks feature.
Their app experience is easily the best out of their competitors (grok, Claude, etc). Which is a clear sign they know that it’s the product to sell. Things like DeepResearch and related are the way they’ll make it a sustainable business - add value-on-top experiences which drive the differentiation over commodities. Gemini is the only competitor that compares because it’s everywhere in Google surfaces. OpenAI’s pro tier will surely continue to get better, I think more LLM-enabled features will continue to be a differentiator. The biggest challenge will be continuing distribution and new features requiring interfacing with third parties to be more “agentic”.
Frankly, I think they have enough strength in product with their current models today that even if model training stalled it’d be a valuable business.
They have a super popular subscription service. If they keep iterating on the product enough, they can lag on the models. The business is the product not the models and not the API. Subscriptions are pretty sticky when you start getting your data entrenched in it. I keep my ChatGPT subscription because it’s the best app on Mac and already started to “learn me” through the memory and tasks feature.
Their app experience is easily the best out of their competitors (grok, Claude, etc). Which is a clear sign they know that it’s the product to sell. Things like DeepResearch and related are the way they’ll make it a sustainable business - add value-on-top experiences which drive the differentiation over commodities. Gemini is the only competitor that compares because it’s everywhere in Google surfaces. OpenAI’s pro tier will surely continue to get better, I think more LLM-enabled features will continue to be a differentiator. The biggest challenge will be continuing distribution and new features requiring interfacing with third parties to be more “agentic”.
Frankly, I think they have enough strength in product with their current models today that even if model training stalled it’d be a valuable business.