With their current API approach they're essentially a commodity. They need to start moving parts of the harness behind the API, otherwise they'll remain a commodity.
Recursive self-improvement changes the parameters a bit, especially for the market-leaders, and it's the one thing that makes me wonder if they'll be able to extend their lead faster than the smaller labs can keep up, but it's an option available to everyone.
> They need to start moving parts of the harness behind the API
This isn't without it's challenges however.
1. This will increase costs drastically, since they would need to a run a sandbox per use to ensure data isolation.
2. Increased latency, and this directly limits how much of the harness can be moved to the cloud before the users notice sluggishness
Oh, I'm sure. If it wasn't a bit of a tricky needle to thread we'd have seen them start to do it already.
3. Users can still move to better open harnesses