I increasingly think the way to predict who wins in consumer AI is to look at how much compute they have access to and what they pay for it. You can build an amazing product, invent a new form factor, find something users love. But software is becoming a commodity. Someone will copy your features, and then you’re competing on who can serve more users, at a lower cost. If they can serve 100m users while you’re stuck on a waitlist because you can’t get capacity, good luck. Especially if there are network effects. The companies that locked in gigantic amounts of compute 2–3 years ago have a huge advantage. Meanwhile you’re trying to buy capacity during a shortage and paying a premium for it. Same feature, same user, very different COGS. And if they train and serve their own models, they can optimize for their product and avoid paying someone else’s margin on every token. At scale that can make the gap even bigger. They can afford to give away something you need to charge for. All of this makes me think AI structurally favors incumbents. The capex they committed years ago becomes a cost and scale advantage across every consumer product they launch. They still need a good product and distribution. But if they get those right, competing with them is going to be very hard.