A Google engineer has a sobering warning for both Google and Microsoft, saying the two companies are both poised to lose the AI wars.

Microsoft and Google are locked in a battle to dominate the AI market. One of Google’s own engineers, however, believes both companies may be surpassed by open-source options.

According to The Guardian, the engineer wrote a memo outlining the challenges Google and Microsoft face.

“The uncomfortable truth is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch,” the engineer wrote before explaining that the “third faction” was the open-source community.

“While our models still hold a slight edge in terms of quality, the gap is closing astonishingly quickly. Open-source models are faster, more customisable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable,” wrote the Google worker.

Google is already behind the curve, playing catch-up to Microsoft’s developments. Hearing that the company’s efforts may ultimately not yield the desired results is certainly not what executives want to hear.