tech
March 19, 2026
Most AI companies are renting their position. These 4 prompts tell you if yours is one of them.
On February 25, Perplexity shipped the best agentic product of the month. And it might not matter.

TL;DR
- Perplexity launched an agentic product called Computer, utilizing multiple frontier models and functioning as an orchestration system.
- Despite excellent execution, Perplexity's product relies on competitor models for its core reasoning and research capabilities.
- The article argues that most AI companies, excluding major players like Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Meta, are in a structurally fragile position.
- It discusses the 'middleware trap' and the mathematical reasons why good execution on the wrong layer of the stack is unsustainable.
- The piece aims to identify four surviving positions in the AI industry where hyperscaler incentives align with survival, and offers a diagnostic test for companies.
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