Comment by mkl

All of that stuff takes time and resources. Self-improvement may not be easy, e.g. if they end up in a local maximum that doesn't extend, and it probably won't be cheap or fast (if it's anything like frontier LLMs it could be months of computation on enormous numbers of cutting-edge devices, costing hundreds of millions or billions, or it may not even be possible without inventing and mass-manufacturing better hardware). Another company achieving a slightly different form of AGI within a few years will probably be at least competitive, and if they have more resources or a better design they could overtake.