This really reinforces the idea that the AI race and the Railroad Mania of the 19th century are very similar.

So many different companies are going to have similarly powerful ai that there will be no moat around it and it will be cheap. They will never earn their investment back.

I suspect this is the real reason behind Anthropic limiting subscriptions to their own products and keeping API prices several times higher than comparable models. Applications more sticky than API users and less technical users more sticky than programmers (ie Cowork more sticky than Code).

Anthropic generally seem more into living within market discipline and market signals of some sort. Products with margins, even if it's sort of irrelevant considering R&D costs and capital inflow.

That said, there's nothing like the real thing.

The risk is something like the railroad bubble and the dotcom. Over-investement, circular revenue and a timeline that doesn't work.

Or, maybe it'll work out.