That said, I like the frugly approach. The cosmetic upgrade approach in Fortnite the author mentioned is also implemented in a new game I've been playing called The Finals. It is nice not to have winning behind a paywall.

At the end of the day, the incumbents are mostly providing the APIs or the hardware to do anything significant. There may be a handful of outliers, but it seems a vast majority of AI startups these days are a new iteration of resellers.

Before, it was hosting that was resold, now it is APIs or if their customers have any gumption TPUs and GPUs, which is arguably still hosting.

I don’t see startups ruling AI.

Also, a lot of people misattribute the label of startup to established companies. I could go on a rant about tech journalists being the cause, but I’ll just say OpenAI is not a startup.