Foundation models are eating the startup ecosystem. AI companies built on narrow capabilities, thin wrappers, or single-use integrations are operating on borrowed time, with insiders estimating a 12-month window before the major labs expand into their categories.
This is not speculation. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have demonstrated a consistent pattern: identify high-value adjacent markets, absorb the capability natively, and compress the startup's margin to zero. The startups that survive know this, and some joke about it openly, which is either courage or denial.
The full piece is worth reading for what it reveals about founder psychology inside this window: how teams are calculating runway against model expansion timelines, what moats they think are real, and which categories are already in the crosshairs. The clock is the story.
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