I mean, none of this would be possible without insane amounts of capital and world class talent, and they probably just made it a lot harder to acquire both.
But what do I know? If you can convince yourself that you're actually building AGI by making an insanely large LLM, then you can also probably convince yourself of a lot of other dumb ideas too.
I think the next AGI startup should perhaps try the communist revolution route, since the capitalist-based one didn't pan out. After all, Lenin was a pioneer in effective altruism. /s