This is almost never true unless it's a life saving drug. Xerox literally had the keys to the kingdom for years before multiple people came along and figured out how to get the "tech" to mass market.
This is one of those rare occasions in my opinion. OpenAI trained truly ground breaking models that were miles ahead of anything the world had seen before. Everything else was really just a side show. Their marketing efforts were, at best, average. They chose to call their premier product "ChatGPT", a term that might resonate with AI scientists but appears as a random, forgettable string of letters to the average person. For a considerable period, there was no mobile app available. Their web app had its share of bugs, while third-party apps delivered a better UX. Maybe Sam Altman deserves credit for attracting talent and capital, I don't know. But it seems to me that OpenAI's success by far and large hinges on their game-changing models.
olalonde|2 years ago