An innovation tends to bring a lot of attention, discussions about its progress, advantages, disadvantages, and some ethical consequences. In the same manner, an innovation tends to create competitive forces between different institutions and companies to see who will lead that sector. Artificial intelligence has been the center of attention in this age, and many companies are trying to stay ahead of the competition. This article takes a product marketing lens to show how a company can win the AI race. The article does not intend to cover the ethical lens of artificial intelligence. It is primarily a product marketing perspective on how any brand building AI-related products can take advantage of certain product approaches to stay ahead of competitors.

Introduction to the AI Race.

In a capitalist economy, there is always a race, often described as competition among brands and companies in the same sector. When an innovation arises, companies want to be industry leaders and capture a larger share of the market. In recent times, we’ve seen a range of AI products and companies emerging and racing to become number one in their respective categories. The question is how a brand can capture a large share of the market and lead its segment. This is a major question that companies and brands are asking.

The competitive landscape in the artificial intelligence category is enormous at this point. Some companies, like XAI and Grok, are moving fast to capture the market, believing that speed is what it takes to catch up in the AI race. At the same time, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and others are not relenting. The major argument is that the company that can innovate the fastest will gain a competitive edge. We will explore this argument further and see whether speed alone is what it takes to win and lead.

Speed as a Competitive Advantage.

Across categories, companies and brands want to innovate quickly and be the first to introduce specific features, believing that the first-mover advantage is the overall determinant that dictates which company will have a competitive edge in the market. Yet, we have seen several examples of brands that entered the market later than everyone else and still became leaders in their categories.

Some may attribute this to the innovation of the new product, which late-coming brands bring to the market. While this might be true to some extent, it does not fully capture why brands win or stay ahead. If customers or users are already using an alternative product, the reason a newcomer succeeds lies in its ability to capture users from existing brands. This can be achieved through different means, such as having a better product. Still, the main reason can be summarized as follows:

“A brand’s competitive advantage in a category depends on how easy it can onboard users and how hard it is for users to switch to another alternative or competing product.”

When a new brand innovates quickly and enters an existing industry, its success depends not only on speed and innovation, but also on how easy it is for users to switch from existing solutions to the new one. What this means is that an existing or first brand in a category can determine the success of upcoming brands, depending on how easy or difficult it is for users to switch. The speed of a company in a product category will only yield positive outcomes by being the first to capture a specific user group and making it hard for new brands to take those users away.

History of Habit-Forming Products.

We’ve shown how brands win and stay ahead of competitors based on their ability to onboard and retain users, regardless of innovations entering the market. It seems that users are not always looking for the most innovative product, but rather one that works well enough for them, and then they lock in. Leading brands in a category might not be the most innovative, but they have successfully found a way to capture and retain users. A major example is social media.

We’ve had many social media platforms after Facebook, but it still has the largest number of users. Why? The answer is not simply that Facebook was one of the early platforms, but rather how hard it is for users to leave Facebook for competitors. Even when users register on a new social media platform, they often find it difficult to delete their Facebook account because of the number of followers, friends, and posts they have accumulated, making it almost impossible to switch completely to a new competitor. Still, even when users are hooked on existing brands because of what they have to lose, they sometimes transition to new products and bear the cost of abandoning their previous investments. The easier it is to make the tradeoff between leaving existing products for new ones, the more it determines whether a brand will be a leader in a particular category.

AI Memory and the Next Generation of Habit-Forming Products.

While users can still leave an existing product for a new one despite their investment, AI memory decreases the ability of users to switch to competitors’ products. If artificial intelligence products are autonomous agents that can learn based on how specific users interact with them and improve themselves accordingly, it becomes very difficult for users to switch to competitors. For example, imagine a Tesla self-driving car owned by someone in Johannesburg. The car has learned how the roads in that city work because the owner has driven it around, and it now fully understands the routes. It would be difficult for the owner to switch to another brand, even if it looks better, because of how hard it would be for the new car to learn those routes or synchronize with them.

Another example is when ChatGPT can understand users by storing their interactions in memory and using that to give better responses. It becomes difficult for users to switch to another platform that lacks previous information and understanding of them, since they would need to start afresh. By using a product that “knows the user” and adjusts based on their specific interests, as social media algorithms work, users tend to stay glued to the platform. The algorithm learns from what users follow, interact with, and engage in, creating a sense of familiarity that makes the experience personalized and sticky. AI memory, and its ability to learn and adjust to understand users, will create even stronger product stickiness than before, making it difficult for users to shift to other competitors because the trade-off will be very high. Even when new innovative products emerge, it will be difficult for users to make the switch. This is when a brand has truly won.

Conclusion.

This article aims to explore how brands can gain a competitive advantage when innovations arise by approaching the issue from the perspective of speed and by creating products that easily capture users while making it hard for them to leave. Making it hard to leave is not about forcing users to stay but about creating products that satisfy them and encourage long-term loyalty. Brands that try to force users to stay even after they decide to leave can ultimately harm themselves.

While I do not intend to expand on the ethics of AI and how it creates product stickiness between brands and people, creating product stickiness is not about manipulating users but about designing products that make their lives easier. Lastly, the artificial intelligence race is still on, and many brands and companies are building products in that category. Some first movers may not end up having the long-term competitive advantage, depending on how they answer the questions I’ve raised here.