OpenAI Won the Demo. Google and Anthropic Are Winning the Default.
When everyone's watching your magic tricks, it's easy to miss who's rewiring the building.
Why I think OpenAI could lose the next phase to Google and Anthropic
The feeling I can’t shake
For a while, “OpenAI” and “the frontier” felt basically synonymous.
You’d open ChatGPT, do something that felt like a magic trick, and then watch the rest of the market sprint to copy it. OpenAI moved first. Everyone else reacted.
Lately, I’m seeing something different.
Not collapse. Not doom. But a subtle shift: OpenAI looks busy, while Google and Anthropic look directed.
And in this market, direction is the thing that compounds.
My thesis in plain English
I think OpenAI is at real risk of losing the next phase of the market to Google and Anthropic.
Not because OpenAI got “worse.” They’re still excellent.
It’s because the battle is moving from “best model demo” to “default AI layer inside how work already happens.” Once you’re in that phase, distribution, enterprise trust, and infrastructure matter as much as raw model quality. Sometimes more.
OpenAI’s consumer gravity is a blessing and a trap
OpenAI won the consumer mindshare game. Full stop.
When you have hundreds of millions of people showing up and a product that’s basically a verb, the temptation is obvious: ship consumer features fast. Polish the experience. Add delight. Keep engagement up.
That’s not wrong. It’s rational.
But it creates a real risk: you start building for the loudest feedback loops. The ones that come from everyday consumer usage. And you slowly drift from the harder work of making AI stick inside real workflows at real companies.
That drift is what I mean when I say “North Star.” It’s not that OpenAI doesn’t have one. It’s that from the outside, it’s getting harder to see what it is.
The structural advantage problem
Here’s the hard part for OpenAI: in 2026, “having a great chatbot” won’t be enough.
The winners will be the companies that make AI unavoidable. Not through hype. Through default placement.
Google’s advantage is not subtle
Google can put AI in front of you without asking for permission.
Search is already where people start. If Google turns Search into the primary AI interface for questions, research, planning, and decisions, that’s a distribution lever nobody else can match. Then layer in Workspace. Then Android. Then the rest of the ecosystem.
On top of that, Google has a deeper structural stack than almost anyone: infrastructure, data, distribution, and now a pace of shipping that feels like they finally believe AI is the product.
When a company can change the product surface and the underlying cost curve at the same time, they don’t need to “win Twitter.” They just need to keep moving.
Anthropic’s advantage is focus
Anthropic’s story is different. It’s not “we will be everywhere.” It’s “we will be trusted where it matters.”
They’ve been disciplined about enterprise positioning, safety posture, and, most importantly, coding.
Coding is not just a revenue wedge. It’s an adoption wedge. Developers pull tools into companies. Then those tools spread. If you win the developer workflow, you get a path into the enterprise that marketing can’t buy.
Anthropic feels like they’re playing that game on purpose.
The product bets that make me nervous
This is where my opinion sharpens.
OpenAI has shipped a lot. Some of it is genuinely great. But several of the big bets feel like they’re chasing the market instead of pulling it.
Voice: Cool demo, but voice alone doesn’t create a durable enterprise habit. It needs a workflow to attach to.
Images: The bar moved fast, and OpenAI’s image story has felt more reactive than category-defining.
Video: Video generation is impressive, but as a social product it’s still searching for a daily job. A lot of people try it. Not many build it into how they work.
Even “Code Red” moments haven’t obviously translated into a step-change in product advantage. In other words: the urgency is visible, but the outcomes aren’t always. I know that 5.2 was supposed to be a solid upgrade, but I have not been blown away by it if I’m being honest. I’ve had 5.2 Pro conk out several times with no results, and in a lot of cases, I thought the output from 5.1 (which I loved!) was much better.
And that’s the risk. When you’re shipping broadly, it’s easy to look active. But markets don’t reward activity. They reward compounding advantage.
Why I’m not writing OpenAI off
It’s important to say this clearly: it’s not a done deal.
OpenAI still has world-class talent. They have a massive war chest. They have a product that people love. They have deep partnerships and a brand that still carries weight in boardrooms.
And they’re absolutely capable of finding their footing and ripping off a run of wins.
If OpenAI regains clarity on what it wants to own, it can flip the narrative fast. That’s the upside of being OpenAI. The market is already watching.
If I’m wrong, here’s what would have to be true
If I’m wrong about all of this, here’s what would have to be true.
OpenAI would have to pick a crisp North Star again, one that’s bigger than “the best chatbot” and clearer than “we do everything.” They’d need to make their products feel less like a collection of features and more like an operating layer for work. Not demos. Habits.
And they’d need to win the parts of the game that don’t show up in model charts: cost, latency, reliability, distribution, and trust inside real companies. The boring stuff that makes software stick.
That’s the point. This isn’t a referendum on talent. OpenAI still has plenty of it. This is about direction and advantage.
So I’m not calling it. I’m watching for focus. Because if OpenAI finds that focus again, the story flips fast.
I write these pieces for one reason. Most leaders do not need another hot take on which AI company is “winning.” They need someone who will sit next to them, look at where their AI investments are actually landing, and say, “Here is where your current vendor still makes sense, here is where the ground is shifting beneath you, and here is what you should be testing before someone else’s default becomes your disadvantage.”
If you want help sorting that out for your company, reply to this or email me at steve@intelligencebyintent.com. Tell me which AI tools you are using today, where work is still getting stuck, and whether your current vendor strategy assumes the market stays the same. I will tell you what I would pressure-test first, which platform bets I would watch most closely, and whether it even makes sense for us to do anything beyond that first conversation.