A viral Reddit submit has sparked a heated dialogue on the AI startup growth, arguing that the majority AI corporations are doomed to fail as a result of competitors from large tech fashions fairly than human productiveness.
“It is completely mind-blowing to see how most AI corporations at all times (like I imply, at all times) attempt to examine their fashions in opposition to human productiveness,” the person wrote. “We have heard all these bombastic adverts about how they will enhance human productiveness by xxx%.”
The person claims that AI startups are lacking the actual menace—they’re competing not in opposition to people however in opposition to different AI fashions, notably ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, that are already dominating the area.
The submit highlights how large tech AI fashions have gotten “all-in-one Swiss knives”, rendering area of interest AI startups redundant.
“Why on earth would I pay some random AI startup’s mannequin when the fashions from large tech can already do the identical factor? It is mindless,” the person argues. The Redditor factors out Microsoft Copilot for instance, arguing that it is simply an aggregator of AI fashions—but customers nonetheless favor standalone AI instruments like ChatGPT or Claude.
One other instance is Perplexity AI, a search-focused AI device that lately ran an advert evaluating itself to conventional Google search. Nonetheless, the person dismisses this strategy: “Perplexity made an advert with the Squid Sport man to check Perplexity vs. conventional Google search, utterly ignoring the truth that ChatGPT deep analysis IS their primary competitor (not conventional Google search).”
The submit attracts a comparability between the present AI race and the early 2000s search engine wars.
“That is like early 2000s yet again, the place all people stored saying engines like google will change into extra standard as extra customers entry the online. In the meantime, everyone knows the way it went. Solely Google ultimately gained that search engine battle, with all people else changing into losers.”
If historical past repeats itself, solely a handful of AI giants will survive, whereas nearly all of AI startups will fail or be acquired.
With AI fashions quickly evolving and massive tech dominating, many area of interest AI startups may wrestle to distinguish themselves or supply long-term worth. As one Reddit person summed it up within the feedback: “In case your AI startup isn’t fixing a extremely specialised drawback, it’s already useless.”
Nonetheless, one person commented: “Self-hosted open weight fashions are getting higher although. The way forward for AI is about specialisation, not jack of all trades like all the massive corporations are doing. I assume they’re looking for their area of interest.”
