Mythos, Muse, and the Opportunity Cost of Compute

Stratechery's Ben Thompson revisits Aggregation Theory in the context of constrained compute, arguing that controlling demand — not supply — remains the durable source of platform power even when GPU capacity is scarce. The piece examines Mythos and Muse as case studies in how AI-native products compete when compute scarcity reshapes the economics of model access. For CIOs and strategy chiefs, the strategic read is that the coming AI platform wars won't be won at the infrastructure layer — they'll be won by whoever owns the customer relationship at the moment the query is made.