Ben Scharfstein says AI foundation model labs operate like movie studios
Ben Scharfstein · How Scale AI is Pioneering the Future of Work · Aug 26, 2025 · at 45:01
Ben Scharfstein, Head of Product for Enterprise Applications at Scale AI, compares AI foundation model developers to Hollywood content studios.
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“I think that the, I would say my hottest take is, I think the right way to think about foundation labs is that they're like movie studios. And what I mean by that is they invest a ton of money in blockbusters that have a relatively short time spend to pay them back. So you think about, you know, Marvel, you know, you're investing in the Avengers and you invest a billion dollars in it, and then it maybe pays you back over the next 18 months. And then it's pretty irrelevant after that, but you are building that franchise brand. And so that, you know, the GPT class of models, GPT three drafts off of, you know, GPT two and four, whatever, five, but it's like going to be pretty irrelevant later. And you know, there's a back catalog and it's still use it a little bit, whatever. And I think it's, you know, it's just very similar. Like then you're able to turn, you know, that franchise maybe turn into a video game and then maybe it is more like software, but actually right now the model companies look more like a content studio than they do like a software company.”
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