The LLM Landscape for Business
The working map of major AI model families for business buyers: who makes them, how you buy them, and what each is for. Families and positioning are durable; point versions churn monthly and belong in your quarterly check, not your memory.
| Provider | Model family | Access | Business positioning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Claude (Fable / Opus / Sonnet / Haiku) | API, AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud, Azure | Frontier flagship tier plus workhorse tiers; strength in agentic coding, long-horizon autonomy, enterprise reliability; leading enterprise API share |
| OpenAI | GPT (flagship / mid / small tiers) | API, Azure | Frontier generalist family; strongest consumer footprint; deep agent platform (Responses API, Agents SDK, Codex) |
| Gemini (Pro / Flash) | API, Vertex AI, Workspace | Multimodal-first; huge context windows; strongest suite integration (Workspace, NotebookLM) | |
| Moonshot AI | Kimi (K-series) | API, open weights, hosts | Open-weight frontier challenger; near-flagship capability, self-hostable, aggressive pricing |
| DeepSeek | DeepSeek (V-series / R-series) | API, open weights (MIT), hosts | Ultra-low-cost open-weight line; efficiency-first architectures; strong coding and reasoning |
| Alibaba | Qwen | API, open weights, hosts | Dominant small-model tier that runs on ordinary hardware; broad size range |
| Zhipu AI | GLM | API, open weights (MIT) | Open-weight frontier line from China; strong reasoning benchmarks |
| xAI | Grok | API, X platform | Real-time X data access; repositioned toward coding and agents |
| Meta | Llama | Open weights, hosts | The Western open-weight standard-bearer; broad ecosystem, slower recent cadence |
| Mistral AI | Mistral (Large / Small) | API, open weights (Apache) | European champion; open-weight flagships; EU sovereignty appeal |
How to read this table
Model point-versions churn monthly; families and positioning are durable. For live benchmarks and prices, check LMArena and Artificial Analysis, then the provider pricing pages. The selection method — capability, cost, and sovereignty, not brand familiarity — is covered in Chapter 4 of the book, and the quarterly fifteen-minute check-up habit in its Section 4.6.
Changes this quarter
2026-07: Page created from the book's mid-2026 snapshot. Open-weight challengers (Kimi, DeepSeek, GLM) now sit within striking distance of the closed frontier; enterprise procurement continues shifting toward cloud marketplaces (Bedrock, Azure, Vertex) for data-residency reasons.