The battle for the next interface layer is already underway, but unlike previous technology transitions, there’s no consensus on what form it will take. Apple, Meta, and OpenAI have placed massive bets on three fundamentally incompatible visions. Each strategy is internally coherent. Each could plausibly win. Only one will define how 5 billion people access intelligence for the next 15 years.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Whoever controls the interface layer captures $400+ billion in annual revenue, extracts a 30% tax on all transactions, and compounds network effects into an insurmountable moat. This is the same structural advantage that made IBM dominant in the 1970s, Microsoft in the 1990s, and Apple from 2007 onward.
But here’s what makes this transition unprecedented: Three years into the AI era, and we still don’t know which interaction model will win.
