even ignoring distillation, so long as hardware or ml get better over time, training a new model from scratch is cheaper the later you do it

If hardware gets better over time, they also get better for OpenAI.

Yep the poster is assuming efficiencies will not come.

Absolutely they will. And this is a huge problem for OAI - given Google is targeting vertical integration, they will acquire a cost-advantage. As long as the model performance is good enough, they will kick OAI and Anthropic out in the long-run.

The valuations of OAI and Anthropic are nonsense. A true valuation would incorporate failure risk, which is natural for startups/fast growing and money losing firms. Anyone who takes them serious is incredibly delusional.