Azure had a real competitive advantage thanks to being the only hyperscaler able to offer OpenAI models, but this also hindered OpenAI, particularly once it became clear that many enterprises cared first and foremost about accessing models on their current cloud of choice; I've been noting for a while that this was a real competitive advantage for Anthropic.
As AI makes it trivial to build and launch products (and, soon, even come up with product ideas), the biggest challenge for product teams is quickly becoming distribution: getting people to pay attention to your product in the increasing cacophony of launches.
