Is OpenAI the new Amazon? The ChatGPT maker keeps branching out and erasing market value from competitors. (www.businessinsider.com)

OpenAI this week revealed a suite of internal AI-powered SaaS tools for things like sales enablement, documentation management and customer support — news that triggered a broad sell-off in public SaaS names as investors priced in the threat that OpenAI could extend those capabilities beyond its own walls. The market reaction echoes how Amazon’s expansion into groceries, pharmacies and other verticals once erased value from incumbents: even hints or adjacent moves from OpenAI (Sam Altman’s “fast fashion era of SaaS” quip) are enough to spook investors in companies such as HubSpot, DocuSign, ZoomInfo and Salesforce. The significance is twofold for the AI/ML community: technically, OpenAI is applying large-model capabilities across enterprise workflow automation and creative tasks (e.g., Sora for video), demonstrating how foundation models can subsume specialized software functions; strategically, its partnerships and infrastructure ties — notably with Nvidia’s multi‑billion-dollar backing — amplify its scale advantage. The pattern (Adobe hit after Sora; Broadcom wobble after the Nvidia tie-up; Chegg’s decline when ChatGPT siphoned student demand) signals that model-driven productization can quickly redraw market maps, pressure incumbents on price and feature parity, and accelerate consolidation or new API/partnership plays. For developers and startups, the takeaway is urgent: differentiate on data, vertical expertise, privacy/compliance, or partner with model providers rather than competing directly.