When services get boring
The scenario for enterprise deployments may differ, but in that space AI providers have little choice but to differentiate themselves through specialized service provision, reflecting the unique needs of different enterprise market sectors, including sovereign cloud offers. All the same, the inference remains one in which genAI, while important, becomes a service — and once that happens, it will inevitably evolve into a commodity.
As a commodity, the cost of access to these services can only fall, posing economic challenges to providers forced to invest in processors and energy to handle the growing number of requests. What happens next, history shows, is the collapse of some providers and the emergence of a small number of names who must themselves avoid becoming visible monopolies in that space, even as they grapple with the also inevitable emergence of ever-tightening regulation around data protection, usage, and so on.
The only way out for any of these providers might be to seek out ways to develop unique market offerings you can’t get elsewhere. Consolidation is inevitable.