I think you've been drinking the "LLMs only improve by adding parameter counts" that SOTA labs are selling VCs to build data centers so they can keep eating through cash to their own benefits.

To the countrary, the reason Chinese models are excelling in the smaller area is because there's tons of fat in closed source models because of the crazy cash being thrown around.

There absolutely is space to improve intelligence and capabilities without lathering on more and more parameters.