Everyone has to get capital efficient now — and fast!
So, it's a race to the bottom because they have to keep spending more and more money on training the models just to keep ahead of the competition, while prices are driven down by the availability of open models.
Chinese companies understand this, and that's why they give their models away in the open. The real money is going to be in integrations and custom services built on top of the models. The models themselves aren't what's valuable.
This is a real question, because I just don't know. Don't the models needs lots and lots of training that need the gobs of giant data centers? So you either need the infrastructure or the money to buy computing to make the models? I see that all the money is being invested in AI and data centers but I do not quite understand why.
I am no economist or business person but AFAICT the massive amount of money being burned is because everyone in the space believes there will be a Google-like (for search) single winner who takes all when the dust settles on the AI race.
Because of this belief they are willing to burn any amount of money they can get their hands on to get to this mythical finish line as fast as they possibly can, seeing it as existential. Moving fast means moving expensively.
The real question is why anyone believes this single-winner theory when all available evidence so far suggests there is neither a moat nor a lock-in opportunity at all.