If AI is a highlander market, then the survivor will be able to eventually aquire all those assets on the cheap from the failing competitors that flush their debt in bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, highlander hopefuls are spending other peoples money to compete. Some of them with dreams of not just building a tech empire, but to truly own the machine that will rule the world in every aspect.
Investors are keen on backing the winner. They just do not know yet who it will be.
Until China sees it valuable to fund open weights SOTA-ish models, even the winner might struggle. There is very little capture - protocols are mostly standard so models are mostly interchangeable and if you are trying to raise prices enough to break even on the whole operation, somebody else can probably profitably run inference cheaper.
"oh look, with open weights now everyone can run this quadrillion param 'superintelligent' model. but what's that? only we have the power capacity and cheap $/W to actually serve it? funny thing...!"
I interpreted it as "there can only be one" which I believe is a quote from the Highlander movie; it's a "winner takes all" and that winner gets the title of "highlander."
In this situation then everyone who _isn't_ the winner will go broke -> sell off all their stuff on the cheap because they're desperate -> the winner gets all their hardware for a great deal and becomes even more powerful.
Meanwhile, highlander hopefuls are spending other peoples money to compete. Some of them with dreams of not just building a tech empire, but to truly own the machine that will rule the world in every aspect.
Investors are keen on backing the winner. They just do not know yet who it will be.