OpenAI has some big questions. It doesn’t have unique tech. It has a big user base, but with limited engagement and stickiness and no network effect. The incumbents have matched the tech and are leveraging their product and distribution. And a lot of the value and leverage will come from new experiences that haven’t been invented yet, and it can’t invent all of those itself. What’s the plan?

It seems to me that OpenAI has four fundamental strategic questions.

First, the business as we see it today doesn’t have a strong, clear competitive lead. It doesn’t have a unique technology or product.

Second, the experience, product, value capture and strategic leverage in AI will all change an enormous amount in the next couple of years as the market develops.

Third, while much of this applies to everyone else in the field as well, OpenAI, like Anthropic, has to ‘cross the chasm’ across the ‘messy middle’ (insert your favourite startup book title here) without existing products that can act as distribution and make all of this a feature, and to compete in one of the most capital-intensive industries in history without cashflows from existing businesses to lean on.

Fourth, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it”

– Steve Jobs, 1997