JPMorgan: Software profits are shifting from the model layer to the infrastructure layer

Deep Tide TechFlow message, according to Chaoxin Research, a July 13 report from JPMorgan Chase states that Starbucks’ in-house AI tools replace Microsoft and IBM software, Microsoft uses its own MAI to replace OpenAI and Anthropic models, and Meta develops its cloud business by selling AI compute power; the three together indicate a trend: software profit pools are shifting from the model layer to downstream.

DigitalOcean’s Q2 remaining performance obligations exceed $800 million, up 10x year over year, with AI inference accounting for a substantial share; Cloudflare reports that more than half of its requests come from AI agents and has launched a paid web-crawler paywall, opening up a new revenue stream.

Morgan Stanley believes model providers face pressure to be replaced; demand remains strong at the infrastructure layer, but the structure is changing. Enterprise customers’ bargaining power is increasing, and the investment logic needs to shift from “models as winners” to “infrastructure and the intermediary layer.”