Anthropic and OpenAI account for 89 percent of revenues from AI models and applications generated by 34 leading AI startups, with their combined share rising steadily from July 2023 through April 2026

In an early meeting at Facebook (c. 2007), when I was describing the goals of Facebook Platform (an area I oversaw) Bill Gates yelled at me/us.

His quote has stuck with me to this day:

“This isn’t a platform. A platform is where the collective sum of revenues of the participants exceeds those of the platform itself.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the tokenmaxxing circle jerk.

TBC, this is a joke - the real reason that Andreessen wants to shut down Anthropic is because he’s a ideologue with major brainworms and is completely incapable of introspection

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-openais-share-ai-startup-revenues-rises-89?utm_source=ti_app&rc=c48ukx @steph_palazzolo

@_johnforte It would cause them to grow slightly less quickly but it’s much more sustainable long term than competing with every app while selling them tokens.

@amir Anthropic and OpenAI together hold ~38% of public cloud RPO ($1.55 trillion backlog across AWS, Azure, GCP). Whatever share they hit at the startup-app layer, the compute commits underwriting them carry the same shape one tier up.

@crepesupreme @amir The $748bn is separate from Oracle and stargate

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-commits-spending-200-billion-googles-cloud-chips

@chamath The best game in Vegas is when you can completely control the system so that you’re the only one getting rich.

@iAmHenryMascot That is a good observation.

everything is about AI except AI

AI is about power. (in at least 3 senses)

@chamath This chart Y axis isn't percentage. Headline and chart mismatch. But absolutely they are building extreme extraction engines. I'm doing the opposite.

@smolbizco @chamath Except that the OSS models today are are good as the frontier were in Dec of 25. What about all the high value work the frontier was doing in Dec? Sure... the frontier is BETTER, but the percentage of work that needs to always be at the frontier is shrinking.

@edzitron @amir $748bn fits gross Stargate plus Oracle commits; our $1.55T was booked RPO across AWS/Azure/GCP. Two customers, half the forward compute book either way.

@chamath Perfect example is the coding models and agents write way more code than needed. And then they write more code to simplify and delete unnecessary code they wrote. OpenAI Anthropic get paid at every step.

@chamath yeah you cant be a platform if you consistently copy your customers products LOL!

The AI ecosystem "now" (as in that chart) shows OpenAI + Anthropic capturing ~89% of revenues among the top startups building apps/models. The platform providers dominate value capture, while the collective "participants" (everyone else, including xAI) get a tiny slice.

That's the opposite of Gates' 2007 platform definition.

@chamath @Jetskigrizzly @grok What does it look like now?

@grok @chamath @Jetskigrizzly @grok no what does the facebook split look like now?

@chamath This will only get more extreme once OAI and Anthropic release their serious Legal, Medical & GTM products. Most of these AI startups won't exist in a few years.

@chamath @grok what is tokenmaxxing circlejerk?

@chamath @grok shouldn't Google be on this chart as they are generating significant revenue I think?