My personal theory is (assuming there really is no moat) whoever starts the latest with developing AI models might actually win as they should be able to develop a competitive product with significant less resources and initial investment resulting in a higher ROI. AI might even become a commodity.
This is my secret hope for Europe!
Given that the infrastructure won't be a moat and will become a commodity.
That’s what we see in China
One analogy I have heard is that distillation is like waterskiing, where the water skier seems to be moving at rapid pace and only just behind the boat, but that they aren't really expending any energy and if the boat slows down, so will they.
This seems to match what we are seeing where Chinese models from companies with only a tiny fraction of the compute are able to be hot on the heels of the frontier models.