OpenAI is borrowing lots of ideas out there as they search for ways to make money. If you have a github project then they can borrow your idea. However if you have an idea that's closed source or behind an API, your idea could be advanced enough that it might not be easy for them to figure out what's going on. So I don't think they are in position to crush all agentic startups. If you use their API and they peek into your prompts, then they can figure out a good part of what you might be doing. By them venturing off into applications, I don't trust them. For my experiments, I never use OpenAI. Good prompts are gold in this age, don't send your prompts/data to any entity you don't trust.
Agentic startups first and foremost work as sales people for the underlying tech. "Just a wrapper" tool can reach out to potential customers who would be impossible to acquire for tech giants.
I've no doubt OpenAI will be able to develop models that put many AI Startups out of business.
...but that's only half the battle.
Beyond just having better agents, they need to be able to communicate that value to the users of all these different niches, and that's very hard to do with authority and credibility....especially in narrow niches.
How can OpenAI position themselves as experts in accounting, finance, law, coding, sysops, design etc.
For homogenous tasks like 'diary management'- sure, I can see a world where OpenAI's agents are widely used.
But for niche/specific or tasks that need domain expertise I think they'll end up partnering with companies, borrowing from their credibility/brand within the niche, to perfect the product but mainly as a way to drive confidence within prospective users.
I see a lot of parallels to operating systems: sure, Apple will have a crack at homogenous tasks like Calendaring, Task management etc, but they've got no business with jobs that need real depth like Design, in which case they'll partner with best-in-class brands like Adobe.
OpenAI is borrowing lots of ideas out there as they search for ways to make money. If you have a github project then they can borrow your idea. However if you have an idea that's closed source or behind an API, your idea could be advanced enough that it might not be easy for them to figure out what's going on. So I don't think they are in position to crush all agentic startups. If you use their API and they peek into your prompts, then they can figure out a good part of what you might be doing. By them venturing off into applications, I don't trust them. For my experiments, I never use OpenAI. Good prompts are gold in this age, don't send your prompts/data to any entity you don't trust.
Agentic startups first and foremost work as sales people for the underlying tech. "Just a wrapper" tool can reach out to potential customers who would be impossible to acquire for tech giants.
I have no doubt that they would prefer selling an end user tool rather than an API. There's much more money to be made in the first case.
Even if these interface wrappers can seem easy it also comes with time consuming integrations, custom features, marketing and sales efforts.
My bet is however that they will lose this bet because their efforts would be spread out too thinly.
As long as the open source or competitor models are close enough to the GPT variants, this won't work.
I've no doubt OpenAI will be able to develop models that put many AI Startups out of business.
...but that's only half the battle. Beyond just having better agents, they need to be able to communicate that value to the users of all these different niches, and that's very hard to do with authority and credibility....especially in narrow niches.
How can OpenAI position themselves as experts in accounting, finance, law, coding, sysops, design etc.
For homogenous tasks like 'diary management'- sure, I can see a world where OpenAI's agents are widely used.
But for niche/specific or tasks that need domain expertise I think they'll end up partnering with companies, borrowing from their credibility/brand within the niche, to perfect the product but mainly as a way to drive confidence within prospective users.
I see a lot of parallels to operating systems: sure, Apple will have a crack at homogenous tasks like Calendaring, Task management etc, but they've got no business with jobs that need real depth like Design, in which case they'll partner with best-in-class brands like Adobe.
I presume apple store had similar approach on building native applications after saw marketplace analytics. It all about resources and market reach.