Quoting Dean W. Ball

According to commentary by Dean W. Ball, frontier AI labs face a critical economic squeeze. These massive models cost enormous sums to train, but most of that investment is only recouped in the first few months after release, when they're genuinely cutting-edge. After that brief window closes, newer models arrive, competition intensifies, and profits evaporate. Every delayed release is money lost. Meanwhile, the infrastructure buildout—the trillion-dollar data centers powering this race—assumes a global market for frontier AI services. But if governments restrict access to just a handful of approved companies, that economic model breaks down entirely.

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