alt Hacker NewsThere is a major logic flaw in what you're saying.
'If I am a grocery store that pays $1 for oranges and sells them for $0.50, I can't say, "I don't have enough oranges."'
How about 'if I'm a grocery store and I see no limit on demand for oranges at $.50 but they are currently $1, I can say 'if oranges were cheaper I could sell orders of magnitude more of them'.
Buying oranges for $1 and selling for $0.5 is an investment into acquiring market share and customer relationships and a gamble on the price of oranges falling in the future.
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Selling below cost is also called "predatory pricing". Sadly it's legal in US but it's something wealthy companies do to kill competitors and end up with captive customers.
> Buying oranges for $1 and selling for $0.5 is an investment into acquiring market share and customer relationships
It's a delusion that customers are going to remain with the behemoths when a Qwen model run by an independent is $10/m, unlimited usage.
This is not a market that can be locked-in with network effects, and the current highly-invested players have no moat.
> acquiring market share and customer relationships
The whole setup rests on this, and it seems mythical to me. These guys have basically equivalent products at this point.