> The whole LLM era is horrible. All the innovation is coming "top-down" from very well funded companies

Wouldn't it be the same for the hardware companies? Not everyone could build CPUs as Intel/Motorola/IBM did, not everyone could build mainframes like IBM did, and not everyone could build smart phones like Apple or Samsung did. I'd assume it boils down the value of the LLMs instead of who has the moat. Of course, personally I really wish everyone can participate in the innovation like the internet era, like training and serving large models on a laptop. I guess that day will come, like PC over mainframes, but just not now.