Comment by written-beyond

Those models can never be capable enough to compare to the level of output generated by frontier labs. Where would you even host these models? Maybe a company like Shopify could manage self managing an few instances but that's it's own headache. Unless Shopify can show significant productivity gains by using ChatGPT or Anthropic's API pricing models there is no way they'll be able to justify using those services at those prices in the long term while maintaining their employee pool.

The other option is to just stay with ChatGPT and Anthropic and fire almost all of their employees, but then they're running the risk of having a significantly worse customer experience in case your development cycle gets out of hand. They'd have lost most of their internal knowledge in the layoffs so they'd be stuck.

If they don't do anything and just let their employees continue to work like they've always been but with LLMs to enhance productivity. Not to the point of implementing software factories, but as most people are using them in the industry. They lose nothing, gain productivity but their shareholders, investors and managers have been gaslit into believing if they're not 200x-ing their AI spending they're probably going to be left behind by competitors who are doing that.

Also some of their larger investors may have investments in other AI companies and they probably strong arm them into contracts with those companies to benefit their portfolio.