Frank Downing(@downingARK):The API businesses of the leading AI companies is becoming less vanilla tokens-as-a-service (stateless, commoditized, lower switching cost), and increasingly headless agents-as-a-service (stateful, differentiated, higher switching cost) OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. will not be thought of as model companies for much longer. They are vertically integrated agent companies.

Frank Downing

@downingARK

Director of Research, AI & Cloud @ARKinvest Disclosure:

Joined April 2021

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Frank Downing@downingARK

2026.09.29 17:36

The API businesses of the leading AI companies is becoming less vanilla tokens-as-a-service (stateless, commoditized, lower switching cost), and increasingly headless agents-as-a-service (stateful, differentiated, higher switching cost) OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. will not be thought of as model companies for much longer. They are vertically integrated agent companies.