Chegg, a subscription ed-tech company that offers students test prep, tutoring, textbook rentals etc, lost half its market cap this week on reports that a new competitor was stealing market share. That competitor… ChatGPT. It appears students have been substituting a smart free thing that helps them do better at school for a paid thing that offered the same promise. For Chegg, the fuse between threat and financial result was short. The market acted swiftly.

The significance of the moment may be broader than Chegg’s stock performance. From here forward, the term getting “Chegged” can only mean the moment your business gets upended by AI.

The feeling is going around. Many businesses, digital media among them, fear they are about to be Chegged. Even the mighty Google, the stabilizing, monopolistic backbone of the web. Microsoft would love to Chegg Google. OpenAI would too.