Ask HN: Why LLM providers sell access instead of consulting services?

Re:Ask HN: Why LLM providers sell access instead of consulti... by beernet on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:25AM (#46911962)

Consulting has weak margins compared to SaaS and scales poorly. Providing the interface for companies to spin up their own consultants (=Agents like Claude Code) is a superior business model in every dimension.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why LLM providers sell access instead of consulti... by pera on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:39AM (#46912082)

But those margins are for traditional businesses with human workers, if these claims of 100x productivity increase are real Anthropic should very easily be able to outcompete Accenture no?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why LLM providers sell access instead of consulti... by raw_anon_1111 on Friday February 06, 2026 @09:41AM (#46913397)

Consulting - especially the more strategy type consulting - is often not about “we don’t know how to do something”, it’s more of “there is so much resistance to change organizationally that not even CxOs/directors can push it through”.

Besides selling consulting services involves a lot of relationship building and knowing the business vertical.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why LLM providers sell access instead of consulti... by farseer on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:48AM (#46912169)

Yup, because LLM inference can be scaled by adding racks of hardware. Consulting can't be.

[ Parent | on HN ]