In the past few years, it seemed that wealthy tech companies would be able to monopolize the growing market for large language models (LLM). And recent earnings calls from big tech companies suggested they are in control. Microsoft’s announcements, in particular, show that the company has created a billion-dollar business from its AI services, including through Azure OpenAI Services and the workloads OpenAI runs on its cloud infrastructure.

However, a recently leaked internal document from Google indicates that the market share of big tech is not as secure as it seems thanks to advances in open-source LLMs. In short, the document says “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI.” The dynamics of the market are gradually shifting from “bigger is better” to “cheaper is better,” “more efficient is better,” and “customizable is better.” And while there will always be a market for cloud-based LLM and generative AI products, customers now have open-source options to explore as well. — Read More