How OpenAI & Anthropic are Secretly Eating Into Your Industry

For years, the conventional wisdom about the big AI players – OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta – was that they were infrastructure providers. They built the black boxes, the powerful language models, the underlying platforms (APIs, cloud services) that others would then use to build industry-specific applications. The idea was, "We build the picks and shovels, you go mine the gold."

But a fundamental shift is underway, and it's challenging the very structure of the tech industry. These AI giants are no longer content just selling shovels; they're putting on hard hats and digging for gold themselves, directly entering vertical markets and offering bespoke, industry-specific solutions. It’s a strategic pivot that mirrors Amazon's notorious vertical integration, and it means your industry is now firmly in their sights.

The New Gold Rush: From APIs to Industry Solutions

Let's look at the pioneers leading this charge:

1. Anthropic: Claude for Financial Services

Just recently, Anthropic made a declarative move into a highly regulated and lucrative sector: financial services. Their new "Claude for Financial Services" offering isn't just a generic AI model. It's a tailored beast, built on Claude-4, that integrates directly with essential financial data sources like Snowflake, FactSet, Morningstar, and S&P Global.