Theoretically Apple can spend just as much. What are the outcomes though? All those giants have their own business that are established and profitable.

It’s the new kids in the block that will make the difference.

You know those lists on twitter about how many companies US has in top 10 and are presented as a win? Those are actually lists of capital concentrations blocking innovation. It looks like US is winning but for some reason life is better in EU and innovation is faster in China.

It’s companies like OpenAI Anthropic that will move US ahead. Even if some core innovation or and capital comes from the establishment.

> Theoretically Apple can spend just as much. What are the outcomes though?

The GP was talking about Google specifically, and their outcomes on AI are nothing to scoff at. They had a rocky late start, but they seem to have gotten over that. Their models are now very much competitive with the startups. And it's not just that have more money to spend. They probably have more training data than anyone in the world, and they also have more infrastructure, more manpower, more of a global footprint than the startups.

The Innovator's Dilemma is an anecdotal, maybe a statistical relationship at best, but not a fundamental law of nature. When an established company has everything it should take to become a leader in a new industry in theory, and in practice their products are already on par with the industry leaders, you know at some point it becomes rational to think that maybe they might become a leader.

Sometimes I worry about the incentives for innovation in the US.

Step 1, find something to innovate on, sell the promise of it to investors. Step 2, build a prototype or worst case, build it for real and start generating income from your truly innovate and unique product. Step 3, get acquired by a large company and then shut down because your product competed with theirs.

End result, general public possibly benefited from your innovation, but in the long run, it was temporary.

Maybe the incentives would be better if it were harder for large companies to acquire small ones? If the path to riches where driven primarily by delivering value to customers. Would love to hear other's opinions on this.

The new kids have an easier time focusing. the big kids can integrate AI with their existing products and user data

In the long term, big kids win no? The big kids are also going to have an easier time with hardware at scale too

> What are the outcomes though?

NVIDIA, and contractors who build data centers, and manufacturers who supply them, will all get rich.

"but for some reason life is better in EU" citation needed

>It looks like US is winning but for some reason life is better in EU and innovation is faster in China

As measured by prosperity life in the US is better; the poorest US state has a higher GDP per capita than most western European countries. Americans have bigger houses, more food, bigger cars, bigger salaries, and access to better medical care and schools if they've got an okay job. Most Europeans are lucky to make $40k/year post-tax. And America is still winning on innovation because its AI models are ahead of China's both in benchmarks and in user preferences. How many people do you know professionally who use a Chinese model and agent framework instead of e.g. Claude Code or OpenAI Codex?