In fact, I’d argue this is even worse, because no matter how much OpenAI improves their product, and Altman is prancing around claiming to need $7Trillion to improve their product, someone else can replicate it for a few million.
First-mover advantage doesn't always have to pay off in the marketplace. FedEx probably has to schedule extra flights between SF and DC just to haul all of OpenAI's patent applications.
I suspect that it's going to end up like the early days of radio, when everybody had to license dozens of key patents from RCA ( https://reason.com/2020/08/05/how-the-government-created-rca... ). For the same reason, Microsoft is reputed to make more money from Android licenses than Google does.