No. In the semiconductor industry, the "catch-up" player isn't normally spending less in absolute R&D terms.

Comparing the R&D costs of creating GPT-4o vs. DeepSeek V3 (the latest gen for which we already have good accurate numbers) it looks like the latter cost 1/20th as much to create.

If Samsung could catch up with TSMC for 1/20th of the cost, people definitely would say that TSMC has no moat.