that manufacturer would have a fraction of the sales. They’re all doing this because data centers buy way contracts are simply more lucrative; the planned rollout of data centers means they’ll sell so much more that they simply can’t accommodate enthusiasts and home builds

This is of course the goal of people like Altman and bezos, they want to hoard compute after hoarding 99+% of all the wealth amongst like 50 people. This is why resistance to data center rollouts is so important and to a further step fair distribution of resources as a political platform. This mess wouldn’t exist if oligarchs were reigned in

Not gonna happen any time soon. The barrier of entry is massive.

Making decent drivers alone is a humongous undertaking: You have to catch up to the work of several decades - and it's a moving target. That's on top of just how difficult it is to design good silicon. Just look at how Chinese GPU manufacturers are struggling to match low-end cards from 10 years ago (even though they are lying and claiming they are matching high-end cards from one generation ago) with cards that have many times the power draw and cost - and all of that with far worse games compatibility.

Hell, even the giant that is (soon to be probably: was) Intel failed to leave a mark in the dedicated GPU business and they actually have decades of experience making (pretty shitty) integrated GPUs and (even shittier) drivers for them.