You realize "tech companies" isn't a monolith? Micron charging inflated prices doesn't magically benefit OpenAI. The "high prices keep out competitors" theory doesn't make much sense either. It's like saying Dennys benefits from higher egg prices because it makes cooking eggs at home more expensive.
It’s classic capex vs opex. I’d keep paying my openai subscription instead of dropping $3k to run a subpar model. If the thing costs $1k I would consider it.
Have they? Aren't they doing a massive datacenter build-out right now? Moreover the massive profits for Micron and Nvidia must be coming from somewhere, and I doubt it's price-sensitive consumers.
I think that realistically, companies compete against each other as individuals and compete against smaller companies and individuals acting more like cartels/monopolies, and that's what OP is referring to in terms of hardware purchasing/contacts/pricing. This also extends outside of tech to investing, so it's likely not just tech responsible for this.