Its always a question of why businesses don't just eat the next level, downstream.
Why doesn't NVIDIA just make the best frontier model?
Why doesn't TSMC just make the best chip design?
Why doesn't ASML just make a fab?
The real answer here is that OpenAI and Anthropic are in the middle of an intense race, and the payoff of having the best model (or one of the two best) is so large that it makes no sense to focus downstream.
Why doesn't NVIDIA just make the best frontier model?
Why doesn't TSMC just make the best chip design?
Why doesn't ASML just make a fab?
The real answer here is that OpenAI and Anthropic are in the middle of an intense race, and the payoff of having the best model (or one of the two best) is so large that it makes no sense to focus downstream.