If AI Models Commoditize, Where Does the Durable Value Go?

Is free AI today the same trade Uber and Lyft ran a decade ago — subsidize adoption first, then discover what users will actually pay later?
Dan Ives accepts the mechanism but rejects the bearish conclusion.
His view is that foundation models will increasingly commoditize and fragment into hundreds of regional and industry-specific variants across construction, retail, consumer applications and other verticals.
If that happens, the durable moat shifts away from the model itself.
The winners become the companies that own enterprise distribution, customer relationships and proprietary data — which helps explain why OpenAI and Anthropic are building large enterprise sales organizations and increasingly competing with incumbent software vendors.
David Sacks draws the line somewhere else.
He argues frontier intelligence has consolidated around OpenAI and Anthropic, allowing those companies to charge premium prices for staying at the cutting edge even as models one tier below them become commoditized.
That leaves investors with two competing AI moats:
Distribution, proprietary data and enterprise relationships.
Or the frontier model itself.
The answer could determine where the largest share of AI economics ultimately accrues.