This week, X announced it’s launching crypto and stock trading inside the app. Not through a partner. Not as a separate download. Tap a ticker symbol in a post, execute a trade. Same week, Meta revealed it sold seven million pairs of AI-powered smart glasses last year — triple the previous two years combined.

The hot take is obvious: “Look, another company trying to be WeChat!” But that reading misses the point entirely.

Something bigger is happening. And it affects every business, not just the tech giants.

The walls are coming down — from the outside in

For years, the Western tech industry watched WeChat in China and scratched its head. Why couldn’t anyone build a super-app here? The answer was walled gardens. Apple controlled the phone. Google controlled search. Meta controlled social. Each platform had every incentive to keep customers locked in and zero incentive to play nicely with others.

Here’s what changed: the customers started pushing back. More and more businesses — and the people who run them — are demanding tools that work across platforms. The moats are eroding, and the platforms aren’t the ones driving it. The market is.

That should tell you something.

The product isn’t the point — the trajectory is

When people see X adding trading features, the instinct is to roll their eyes. When they see Meta’s smart glasses, they think “niche gadget.” That reaction is natural. People don’t like change, especially change they don’t fully understand. But it also misses the bigger picture.

Let’s look at how Elon Musk built Tesla. The Supercharger network wasn’t about building a gas station alternative. It was infrastructure for everything that came after. Now that network is a strategic asset in a world where energy is becoming a new form of currency. The charging stations were the next logical step to get there.

Meta’s smart glasses follow the same logic. The glasses aren’t the endgame — they’re the next logical step toward something much larger. Dismiss the current product, and you miss the trajectory. That’s where the real opportunity lives.

AI is the new middleware

Here’s the truth: the most interesting version of this convergence story isn’t about Big Tech at all. It’s about what happens when any business can build its own bridges between platforms.

Picture a company using Square for payments and point of sale. They need functionality Square doesn’t natively support — a custom loyalty program that ties into inventory and email marketing, say. Two years ago, the options were grim: pay for an expensive third-party tool that gets 80% of the way there, or hire a developer to build something custom. Both options were slow and expensive.

Today? That same business owner can vibe-code a solution in an afternoon. AI has dropped the cost of building custom integrations so dramatically that the old “buy versus build” decision has collapsed. The question is no longer whether to buy or build. It’s how fast can you build what you need to keep up.

The end of one-size-fits-all software

This is the part that matters most for business leaders reading this right now.

There’s a tempting counter-argument floating around: “Just wait a few months and someone will build the tool you need.” That logic falls apart the moment you think it through. When building bespoke solutions becomes cheap and fast, everyone starts creating their own. Two similar businesses rarely have the exact same problem. And even when they do, they almost never want to solve it the same way.

Think about what that means. The competitive advantage shifts from which software you bought to how well you’ve eliminated friction in your specific operations. Off-the-shelf tools become table stakes. Custom-built solutions become the edge.

The era of one-size-fits-all SaaS is ending. Not because the platforms are bad — but because the cost of building something better for your business is dropping through the floor.

The cost of waiting

Of course, the natural response is to wait and see. Let the dust settle. Figure it out next quarter.

Here’s the problem with that: competitors who didn’t wait will have already built bespoke solutions that remove friction from their operations. Those competitors won’t just be ahead — they’ll be moving faster. And in a world where speed compounds, that gap doesn’t shrink over time. It widens.

The super-app isn’t arriving as a single, polished product from Silicon Valley. It’s being assembled — piece by piece — by every business willing to look at the tools now available and ask one question: where is the friction, and how fast can we eliminate it?

The answer to that question is your new competitive advantage. Or someone else’s.