Comment by markmiro

Startups can still win against big players by building better products faster (with AI), collecting more / better data to feed AI, and then feeding that into better AI automation for customers. Big players won't automatically win, but more data is a moat that gives them room to mess up for a long time and still pull out ahead. Even then, big companies already compete against one another and swallowing a small AI startup can help them and therefore starting one can also make sense.