---
title: "A New Axis of Competition"
description: "Intercom \u0026 Chroma shipped custom AI models today. Would you choose one software over another because it has a proprietary model with better performance?"
categories: ["AI","startups","strategy"]
keywords: ["vertical AI models","Intercom Apex","Chroma Context-1","AI moats","custom models","software differentiation"]
date: 2026-03-26
lastmod: 2026-08-07
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/a-new-axis-of-competition/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---


Would you choose one software over another because it has a proprietary model with better performance?

Two companies shipped custom AI models today (three in a week counting Cursor![^4]), raising that question. Intercom launched Apex 1.0, a model for answering customer support tickets.[^1] Chroma released Context-1, a model for multi-hop agent search.[^2]

Apex 1.0 beats GPT-5.4 & Claude Opus 4.5 on customer service tasks.[^1] Context-1 scores 97% on agent search benchmarks.[^2] One Intercom gaming customer saw resolution rates jump from 68% to 75%.[^1]

History suggests[^3] these gains may be temporary. As general-purpose models improve, today's specialized advantage erodes. But with GPU shortages, inference costs will spike, perhaps this will be the moment for built-for-purpose more efficient models.

Intercom built Apex to differentiate in a competitive market. Chroma's bet is different. Context-1 is open-source under Apache 2.0.[^2] Anyone can use it. The model isn't the product. It's marketing rather than sales. Distribution & brand building for their vector database infrastructure.

Two philosophies. Proprietary model as differentiation versus open-source model as adoption mechanism.

> "As features become ~free to build, the technology factors that will differentiate the players will be the AI under the hood. If you're using the same general-purpose off-the-shelf model as everyone else, you have no durable differentiation." - Eoghan McCabe[^1]

AI models offered by software vendors have become a new axis upon which to compete. In the marketing arena, models drive attention & distribution. At the bottom of the sales funnel, they serve as competitive differentiators in performance.

[^1]: Eoghan McCabe, ["The age of vertical models is here"](https://x.com/eoghan/status/1904930482934849556), X, March 26, 2026.

[^2]: ["Chroma Launches Context-1, Efficient Open-Source AI for Agent Search"](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chroma-launches-context-1-302667072.html), PR Newswire, March 26, 2026.

[^3]: Rich Sutton, ["The Bitter Lesson"](http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html), March 2019.

[^4]: ["Cursor, Kimi, & the Open-Source AI Imperative"](https://tomtunguz.com/cursor-kimi-open-source-ai-imperative/), tomtunguz.com, March 2026.