It's not the exact same. People aren't giving Anthropic billions because they are idiots or dislike the Chinese.

I don't disagree that Anthropic has no long term moat but they have been a LOT better than the Chinese models since the beginning.

As programmers, we're natural optimizers. And we frequently deliver solutions that aren't always the best, but just "good enough".

Guess what, the Chinese models, Mistral, Argon etc, aren't "good enough" for a lot of tasks. That's why people pay for Claude.

It isn’t just the Chinese models, though. Google Carbon just came out and from what I have heard is very competitive in direct comparisons and cheaper. Then there is Grok, Muse, etc. I feel fairly confident that there is not enough room for all of these to be successful businesses. Maybe enough room for two at the current valuations, but Google can just lurk in the background forever. Open AI and Anthropic don’t have that luxury. The minute they falter, for even a short period it is pretty much over.

Can you share any example prompts where Chinese models aren't good enough?

As programmers we don’t make the decisions. If anthropic allows the c suite to fire 1000 people but China only 900 people, then anthropic can only coat 10% more than China to be worthwhile.

The delta between "good enough" and "great" is shrinking.