This is the result of the winner-take-all (most) economy. If the very best LLM is 1.5x as good as good as the next-best, then pretty much everyone in the world will want to use the best one. That means billions of dollars of profit hang in the balance, so companies want to make sure they get the very best people (even if they have to pay hundreds of millions to get it).
It's the same reason that sports stars, musicians, and other entertainers that operate on a global scale make so much more money now than they did 100 years ago. They are serving a market that is thousands of times larger than their predecessors did, and the pay is commensurately larger.
It's the same reason that sports stars, musicians, and other entertainers that operate on a global scale make so much more money now than they did 100 years ago. They are serving a market that is thousands of times larger than their predecessors did, and the pay is commensurately larger.