Another perspective: they don't need to create chips that are as good as Nvidia. Current strategy is to create less powerful chips but that have better yields due to smaller die size. They then scale out huge multi-node AI clusters. This requires more power and bandwidth, but they have plenty of those. Data centers are located near renewable energy sources, for example in the desert, where power is nearly free. They are very good at building networking so bandwidth is not an issue. They are very good at building efficient power systems (less heat when routing energy) because they are not behind, even in some areas ahead, in power semiconductors (GaN). They still need to innovate in power delivery systems and cooling systems to be able to handle the scale that's required, but that's easier than solving litography.

In other words, they are working on litography and nanometers, but they're not very worried about those areas because they don't really need them. HN is too myopic, focusing only on single-chip performance and logic chips.