And if governments squeeze on AI your start up is worth pennies over night. Earning 100 MILLION per year already removes any possible financial restrictions you had. Why do you need to have 10x that? Heck even earning "just" 10 millions per year will make all of your financial concerns go away.
I suspect for people like Sam who are compulsively ambitious and competitive, it's not about the dollars. It's about winning.
Further, based on anecdotes from friends and Twitter who know Sam personally, I'm inclined to believe he's genuinely motivated by building something that "alters the timeline", so to speak.
AGI is decades if not centuries away. Cranking a plausible sentence generator to be even more plausible will not get there. I do not understand how people suddenly completely lost their minds.
The hype wave really is something else, eh? People are suddenly talking as if these advanced chatbots are on the precipice of genuine AGI that can run any system you throw at it, it's absolute lunacy
Greed is hell of a thing