India, Oct. 7 -- The most profitable move in artificial intelligence may no longer be selling intelligence. It is selling a model to a company, wiring it into that company's most valuable work, learning the business from the inside, and then shipping the product that competes with it.

In a previous piece for Inc42, I argued that the black box was losing the boardroom, and that enterprise AI built on the customer's own terms was the opening worth chasing. The months since have made the argument more literal than expected. The frontier labs are now moving into their customers' markets, and they are doing it in plain sight.

The Pattern Has Hardened Into A Playbook

Read the moves of the past year together and a sequence emerges. Sell the m...