It’s a rite of passage in major technology waves spanning decades. New operating systems and platforms (OS and OP) with all new technologies provide new opportunities for established technology companies and startups to take advantage of new technologies. And their interests were initially very much aligned. It also coexists with the growth of early rockets.
Then, when the application finds the information it needs, product market fit; Underlying OS/OP companies tap into the best-of-breed application and service layers with their own products. Therefore, new deviations occur rapidly.
of AI technology wave We are watching these movements as a group. Move up and down the AI Tech Stack. Box 6 OS/OP companies compete.”frenemyCorporate styles in boxes 5 and 6 above.
I wrote about software coding contest between Human and Coding AI Phenom Cursor At the software layer. And of course Nvidia and cloud customers At the hardware level, centered around AI GPU chips.
especially humans competing these days With startups beyond Cursor, we continue to pursue more upstream applications with our Claude Code and Claude Cowork apps. Each has experienced incredible multi-billion dollar growth.
And of course, the recent rise Conflict with open source OpenClaw Around the AI agent. Of course now OpenClaw is also a part of OpenAI is a sibling rival.
This is being raised again at Anthropic, with a twist at the board level of an existing application company. And it mirrors a similar moment between Steve Jobs’ Apple and Google at the dawn of the iPhone era in the 2000s.
The information description is as follows: “figma Apple Moment”:
Mike Krieger from Anthropic. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“AI really Change the world! [An example is this] Significant news: Anthropic executive Mike Krieger steps down from Figma’s board of directors. ”
“This could be called Figma’s Apple moment. For young people, we’re talking about the then-Google CEO’s departure from the Apple board in the summer of 2009. He left Google after a month Introducing the Chrome operating system and 11 months Following Google’s Android The first thing that came out was to power mobile phones. Both moves would put Google in direct competition with Apple, something CEO Steve Jobs said at the time. pointed out to explain Why did Schmidt leave Apple’s board of directors? ”
as technology analyst Who has lived in this room for decades, I remember clearly steve jobs anger That’s all What Google does here.
This piece is not very dramatic, but it has historical rhymes.
“Mr. Krieger’s resignation from the Figma board reflects that episode. He resigned on the same day, Tuesday.” Information reported on Anthropic’s plans. To introduce a new tool for website design that competes with Figma’s products. The timing was likely coincidental, but Krieger certainly knows both companies are headed for more intense competition. ”
“Up until now, Figma and Anthropic have appeared to be business partners. Figma has been actively promoting itself as the ideal product to work with Anthropic’s Claude Code. Check out this blog post. From Februaryhas the subtitle, “Workflows that started with Claude Code can now be taken further with Figma.” The problem with Figma is that no matter what benefits that software offers, some designers may find it easier to simply use Claude. Anthropic understands that, and so do Figma shareholders. This explains why the company’s stock price has fallen 45% this year. What’s next for Figma? ”
To stress this point again, we have seen this kind of conflict occur back and forth across waves of technology.
For example, you can track them in advance. The wave of PC technology in 1982But let’s start there for brevity.
Together, Microsoft and IBM started a wave of PC technology with the IBM PC, which ran Microsoft’s MS-DOS.
The latter is, of course, an operating system (OS), what today would be called an operating platform (OP). As outlined in my “”Build value over timeYou can check out the PC Tech Wave here.
New platforms allow applications to thrive on top of OS/OP. Holy Grail Boxes 5 and 6 are Applications and Services. The one with the best Y-axis and X-axis growth and margin over time. The early “killer apps” for PCs were, of course, spreadsheets like this: Lotus 1-2-3 and Bizicalk Early 80’s.
The same goes for word processing companies like Wordperfect. But inevitably, the temptation is too great, so OS/OP companies develop their own and compete “frenemy” style with the applications/services on the platform. this is how we got Microsoft Word in 1983. and Microsoft Excel in 1985. The rest, as they say, was history.
And history rhymes through waves of technology. We saw this phenomenon again in the 1990s wave of Internet technology when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer competed with Netscape and its iconic browser.
And of course, there was the Google/Apple example in the mid-2000s, which saw two OS/OP companies, Apple and Google, clash over similar misalignments.
The important thing here is that in every wave of technology, they sometimes happen suddenly and furiously.
and this AI technology wave In the future, it is likely that there will be a significant amount of inconsistency across the technology stack layers. stay tuned.
(Note: The discussion here is for informational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. join us here)
