Two Companies Now Capture Nearly All of AI's Revenue
What Happened
Per The Information, 34 top AI startups now produce about $80 billion in annualized revenue, or $6.6 billion a month, from selling AI apps and model access. OpenAI and Anthropic together account for nearly 90% of that total and are widening the gap, while the remaining 32 companies split a shrinking slice of the market.
My Take
The "thousand AI startups will bloom" thesis is dead. AI is consolidating faster than search or social media did, and the reason is structural: foundation models have brutal economies of scale, so revenue concentrates upstream. For everyone else, the lesson is uncomfortable but clarifying — do not build a company whose moat is the model. Build on top of it, own the customer relationship and the proprietary data. The middle layer is where money gets vaporized in 2026.
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