They've created a product which uses ideas and data that are largely available to everyone. It's not a pharmaceutical-drug type invention.
If they hadnt been bought my MS, their revenues were going to be in the $20/mo subscriptions. And you'd quickly find a lot of people offering $5/mo for 80% of the quality which would be "just fine" for many cases. (Eg., consider copilot).
The valuation of OpenAI is because it was clear a player like MS would buy it, since the marginal economic value of that technology is to a large incumbent who can quickly deploy it "in the places it's needed". It's that ability to deliver "when needed" which enables MS to draw value from it: ie., MS is just capitalising on it's current position with customers.
The AI bit is actually providing a trivial amount of profit over-and-above MS's existing position with customers.
If you think if it like any other product, the picture is clearer.
A startup invents a widget whose production costs are somewhat high, but there's no patents/etc. So all major players could invent their own. Where's the value? Just in the sale to a major player.
Alternative to do what, exactly?
Were people asking each other "why is there no meaningful alternative to tulip bulbs?" early in the year 1637...??
Can't help thinking that the people getting rich off gold rushes are often the ones selling shovels...
OpenAI has created actual products which have some value. Dall-E is useful to people for what it is. Codex has limitations but some people find it useful. GPT3 and ChatGPT are definitely not general purpose problem solvers but for the people who use them they have value.
Value? One headline from last summer was "OpenAI announces pricing for DALL-E 2: AI images are almost free"[0].
[0] https://the-decoder.com/openai-announces-pricing-for-dall-e-...
Is GPT that far ahead of other LLMs?
I dont get it though, if its that easy why is there no meaningful alternative to openai now? or are you arguing that that will happen later on once its (even more) established?