One reason why the LLM playing field is kind of levelled and "being first" isn't all too meaningful, is that the research was already out there for quite some time before the hype started.

The hype got kicked off, when these large corporations figured out that pouring lots of money into this approach does something. Well, and when there were lots of cheap GPUs on the market from cryptocurrencies imploding.

But as soon as the hype was there, getting investors to give you lots of money and getting GPUs, that's something virtually any company could do.

Having said all that, the other points still stand and they probably could've held their position without even being the best platform. Nevermind especially that Microsoft is most certainly getting lots and lots of investment money for LLMs, too.