The moat between OpenAI and projects like this is access to expensive computing resources, an organizational mandate to invest in aforementioned compute, and finally, access to high quality training data. They were first to market so they’re only getting further ahead thanks to the invaluable real world usage data.

I don’t think their moat ever had anything to do with innovative architecture. If anything, projects like this will widen the chasm since it’s easier for OpenAI to implement new architecture in their models than it is for an independent researcher to scale their ideas.

If projects like this are seeds then the problem is that OpenAI owns all the land.