Are We All Just Building Features for Someone Else’s AI? What Happens When Platforms Eat the Whole Stack

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Welcome to the 182nd edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday and sometimes on Thursday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

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There’s an uncomfortable question floating around right now: are most of us just building temporary features that big AI platforms will absorb later?

AI platforms are moving fast. They ship new capabilities every few weeks.

Many tools built on top of them look impressive for a few months, then get crushed when the platform adds the same thing as a button.

What’s Actually Happening

• Large AI players are racing to own the full stack: models, infra, tools, and end-user workflows.​

• By 2030, some analysts expect only a few vertically integrated AI “empires,” with everyone else either niche or absorbed.​

• At the same time, AI builders can ship usable tools in days, not months. The barrier to “launching something” has collapsed.​

So yes, if you’re not careful, you can easily spend a year building something that shows up as a default switch in an AI platform next quarter.

How to Avoid Becoming “Just a Feature”

Ask three hard questions:

1. Do we own any critical data, or are we just formatting other people’s outputs?

2. Would buyers notice if our product disappeared or would they quickly replace us with an AI workflow?

3. Are we deeply embedded in a workflow, or are we just a nice-to-have UI?

Where It’s Still Worth Building

You’re in safer territory if you focus on:

1. Deep workflows, not surface demos.

   • Owning messy, multi-step processes that AI alone can’t cleanly manage.

2. Real distribution, not just features.

   • Communities, channels, and relationships that aren’t easily cloned.

3. Compounding value, grow with time.

   • Systems that get better as customers use them (data, configuration, integrations).

AI will keep eating generic features. Your job is to build what it can’t cheaply replace.

That's it for today's article! I hope you found this essay insightful.

Wishing you a productive week ahead!

I always appreciate you reading.

Thanks,
Chintankumar Maisuria