Competition can only work when there is variation between the entities competing.

In the US right now you can have a death match between every AI lab, then give all the resources to the one which wins and you'd still have largely the same results as if you didn't.

The reason why Deepseek - it started life as a HFT firm - hit as hard as it did is because it was a cross disciplinary team that had very non-standard skill sets.

I've had to try and head hunt network and FPGA engineers away from HFT firms and it was basically impossible. They already make big tech (or higher) salaries without the big tech bullshit - which none of them would ever pass.