AI's endless game of thrones
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
The AI industry has entered an era of perpetual upheaval where market leaders are crowned — and dethroned — every few months.
- Today's hottest company could be eclipsed by summer and the laggard could revolutionize the world.
Why it matters: As AI changes everything, keeping up with who's dominant and who's falling behind is becoming an existential question for investors, big businesses and regular users trying to guarantee their own futures.
- The wrong call can mean spending millions of dollars on a model that could be outdated by the end of the quarter — or spending hours learning a tool that will soon be obsolete.
The big picture: OpenAI looked unstoppable through last fall thanks to its first-mover advantage with ChatGPT.
- Then Google became the AI lab to beat as its Gemini models outperformed OpenAI's, allowing Alphabet to take market share from its competitor's consumer-facing business and win over investors with a cash moat.
- By spring, Anthropic had taken control of the AI narrative, overtaking OpenAI in enterprise revenue after its coding tool went viral.
- Last week, OpenAI released GPT-5.5, which quickly ranked among the top models on key benchmarks. The company's Codex coding model has rapidly closed the gap with Anthropic's Claude Code.
- This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI missed its own internal revenue and user targets just months ago — a reminder of how quickly the leader can become the laggard, and how quickly the laggard can climb back to the top.
What we're hearing: Several enterprise leaders tell Axios that IT teams are avoiding long-term model commitments to keep budgets flexible so they can switch providers as the landscape shifts.
- Meanwhile, investors who push for clarity on revenue growth get rebuffed: When OpenAI investor Brad Gerstner asked a simple question about revenue projections, Sam Altman offered to help find a buyer for his shares.
Zoom in: Even the AI companies can't accurately project their own growth.
- Anthropic's year-end 2026 revenue target was $30 billion in annualized revenue. It got there eight months early.
- OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar has privately questioned whether the company can fund future compute contracts if revenue doesn't accelerate, fueling reports about a disagreement between her and Altman on IPO timing, according to The Information.
Between the lines: Many in the industry believe — and are betting — that multiple AI labs can, and should, win.
- An investor in both OpenAI and Anthropic told Axios the bigger concern would be a single AI lab becoming dominant, especially since government enterprises will have to shop around for pricing and compliance reasons.
- A single ruling company would make that impossible and could slow how fast AI reaches the rest of the economy.
- Several industries are betting multiple models will win: Amazon, an early Anthropic investor, expanded access to OpenAI models on its Bedrock platform this week, and tech executives at several Wall Street banks tell Axios they're focused on offering multiple models to employees.
The bottom line: Nobody knows who the winner will be, perhaps because there won't be one. But good luck getting investors and CFOs monitoring IT budgets to believe that.
