These articles make me question what "success" means in the AI space. Is "success" just making a lot of money or raising a giant funding round or achieving a valuation? If so, then yeah, there's probably some room for at least a few startups to get there by perfectly the surfing the hype wave. I mean, so many are trying, at least one is bound to succeed by pure chance, even if nothing they're doing is particularly groundbreaking... i.e. the "wrapper around ChatGPT" business model that happens to get sold to just the right executives or PE guys or whatever.
However, if by "success" we mean truly revolutionary technology, I find it difficult to think that this will actually come out of any company trying to be profitable in the current environment. There's just too much urgency around things that are concrete, have low uncertainty, and immediate payoff, either in terms of checked boxes engineering managers can report upwards or 'initiatives' that executives can show their boards. I can't imagine doing anything resembling 'research' in that kind of environment. We'll probably have to wait until after the next recession for companies to get comfortable with throwing money and headcount at these kinds of things.