Could OpenAI be the next tech giant?

The creation of a new market is like the start of a long race. Competitors jockey for position as spectators excitedly clamour. Then, like races, markets enter a calmer second phase. The field orders itself into leaders and laggards. The crowds thin.

In the contest to dominate the future of artificial intelligence, OpenAI, a startup backed by Microsoft, established an early lead by launching ChatGPT last November. The app reached 100m users…