The front runner is not always the winner. If they were able to keep pace with openai while letting them take all the hits and miss steps, it could pay off.

Time will tell if LLM training becomes a race to the bottom or the release of the "open source" ones proves to be a spoiler. From the outside looking while ChatGPT has brand recognition for the average person who could not tell the difference between any two LLMs google offering Gemini in android phones could perhaps supplant them.