The Race Where Two Players Have Nowhere to Retreat
Four names sit at the top right now: Google, xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The list of companies shipping something is endless — Meta, DeepSeek, Qwen, and so on. But at the top, where the real competition happens, it’s these four. And they’re playing completely different games. Four players, four foundations Each of the four has its own strength — and that strength isn’t only the model. Google went its own way. They have Search behind them and the whole stack of services half the world already uses. They don’t need to convince you to come to their model — they bake it into the places you already live. Mail, search, docs, your phone. It’s a very strong play: the model doesn’t even have to be the best, because it’s everywhere. ...