Kim: Pure text AI startups cannot compete against major labs
Bryan Kim · Where does consumer AI stand at the end of 2025? · Dec 29, 2025 · at 33:11
Bryan Kim, partner at a16z, discusses retention and defensibility challenges for startups building pure text-in, text-out AI tools.
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“When the input and the output is text. Where ChatGPT and Gemini of the world shine the most, no matter how deeper you go, no matter how specific you think your text output is going to be, essentially given the frequency of the usage of the main Big Lab products. I think it's going to be really hard to stitch that and get that away from that usage if your product is mainly text and text out.”
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