Leading AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are currently unprofitable, losing money even on premium subscriptions, and are under growing pressure to raise revenue while facing inevitable commoditisation of their models. Cheaper open-weight models from China and API proxy networks are eroding the pricing power of US frontier labs, with Chinese models expected to match current leaders by end of 2026. The likely long-term winners are platform gatekeepers like Apple, Google, and Microsoft, who control software distribution, while pure-play AI labs face shrinking margins and an increasingly difficult path to profitability.
