We’re used to the rhythm by now. A new frontier model drops, performance jumps, and everyone scrambles to test it out. ChatGPT-6, Gemini 3, Grok 5 — we’ll see those roll out soon. But what comes after that probably won’t be more general-purpose giants.

The shift is already happening.

Anthropic is working on a finance-specific model. OpenAI is building something for science and medicine. Microsoft is leaning into healthcare with Copilot and bringing on senior leaders focused entirely on real-world use cases. These aren’t one-offs. They’re signals.

What we’re seeing is the beginning of specialized models that are tuned for specific industries. Not just smaller versions of frontier models. Models that are shaped by domain knowledge, real-world context, and embedded purpose.

Expect to see this hit finance, healthcare, manufacturing, science, government, and education first. Anywhere that has a deep knowledge base and real operational complexity.

And here’s the key difference: these models won’t need the same level of prompting, scaffolding, or custom context that today’s general models require. They’ll come built with that context baked in. Not just smarter answers, but better starting points.

This is the next wave.

Frontier models gave us scale. Specialist models will give us precision.