O'Driscoll: AI markets will consolidate into 3-4 dominant players
Rory O'Driscoll · Benchmark vs a16z: Why Stage Specific Firms Win · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 8, 2025 · at 1:07:17
Rory O'Driscoll is a General Partner at Scale Venture Partners. He argues AI software markets will mirror the oligopolistic stability of traditional SaaS.
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“I think that what a successful set of products at AI starts to gel over the next couple of years, and the people who are in the lead at that point in time get a similar ten-year run to, you know, the ten-year runs you and I both benefited from in SaaS, Jason, and that, that risk of churn and that acute competitiveness, that 60 people shakes out to three or four, and in the end, market formation Evolves in the same way as it did in the enterprise space, which is, you know, typically any enterprise apps marketplace tends to be a, you know, a modest oligopoly of three to four players where, you know, you have steady market share.”
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