They're making the smartest possible move: let others burn insane amounts of capital and time finding the quirks and once they see a viable lane, execute.

It's old Steve Jobs logic. Works backwards from the customer experience to the technology (they're the only big player I see doing this).

I would argue this has been googles approach as well

I feel like they failed upwards into the right strategy. I doubt it was deliberate and not because of the failure of their foundation models to decent.