The technical crowd will always overvalue the recent technical advantage of software over the available customer base and business model math.

> Google, Microsoft, or Amazon are more likely to be the AI leaders than OpenAI or Anthropic.

If not now, then when will these companies be AI leaders?

Even Google, with its staggering advantages in cash, compute, real estate, training data, and having basically invented the field only manages to briefly claim a 1-2 week lead once or twice a year.

There are many companies that have data centers. They are conceptually easy to build. An ASIC is difficult enough that if you make one someone will leapfrog you while you are still making it (at least so far), though once you have one your costs will be enough lower than the competition that you can perhaps undercut them.

If Moore's law continues, then in less than 10 years today's state of the art model will be able to run on a cell phone. How much smarter do we actually need AI to be? Would it still require datacenters and custom hardware?

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