Well they tried and they failed. In that case maybe the smartest move is not to play. Looks like the technology is largely turning into a commodity in the long run anyways. So sitting this out and letting others make the mistakes first might not be the worst of all ideas.

I mean, they tried. They just tried and failed. It may work out for them, though — two years ago it looked like lift-off was likely, or at least possible, so having a frontier model was existential. Today it looks like you might be able to save many billions by being a fast follower. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lift-off narrative comes back around though; we still have maybe a decade until we really understand the best business model for LLMs and their siblings.

This whole thread is about whether the most valuable startup of all time will be able to raise enough money to see the next calendar year.

It's definitely rational to decide to pay wholesale for LLMs given:

- consumer adoption is unclear. The "killer app" for OS integration has yet to ship by any vendor.

- owning SOTA foundation models can put you into a situation where you need to spend $100B with no clear return. This money gets spent up front regardless of how much value consumers derive from the product, or if they even use it at all. This is a lot of money!

- as apple has "missed" the last couple of years of the AI craze, there has been no meaningful ill effects to their business. Beyond the tech press, nobody cares yet.

From a technology standpoint I don’t feel Apple’s core competency is in AI model foundations

They might know something?