>I think it's pretty uncontroversial that not all companies currently pursuing AI will ultimately succeed.
That's probably true, but at the moment the only thing that creates something resembling a moat is the fact that progress is rapid (i.e. the top players are ~6-12 months ahead of the already commoditized options, but the gap in capabilities is quite large): if progress plateaus at all, the barrier to be competitive with the top dogs is going to drop a lot, and anyone trying to extra value out of their position is going to attract a ton of competition even from new players.
That's probably true, but at the moment the only thing that creates something resembling a moat is the fact that progress is rapid (i.e. the top players are ~6-12 months ahead of the already commoditized options, but the gap in capabilities is quite large): if progress plateaus at all, the barrier to be competitive with the top dogs is going to drop a lot, and anyone trying to extra value out of their position is going to attract a ton of competition even from new players.