The Sequence Opinion #524: OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind are Building the Same AI Cognitive Primitives.Are we driving towards monolithic models?
The convergence of cognitive primitives like research, reasoning or search across the major AI labs is an interesting market dynamic.
The leading AI labs—OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind—are independently converging on a shared set of core AI capabilities. Despite different architectures and branding, these organizations are building systems around similar cognitive primitives: reasoning, planning, tool use, search, code execution, and computer control. These functions represent the foundations of general-purpose intelligence and are becoming central to the next generation of AI systems.
This essay explores how each lab is implementing these capabilities, the broader industry trend toward unifying them into integrated agents, and emerging best practices for combining models and tools. We also examine the trajectory toward single models that can reason, perceive, and act across multiple domains—setting the stage for unified AI agents that go far beyond text prediction.