A lot of AI is free, openAI, meta, Google, Apple, etc. all release free models for a wide variety of things, that you can download and run yourself, and have for years.
The thing with AI development is there will be a new top best in a month or two. It's always changing, no one person or company is 'winning'.
Yes, @taytay, free as in liberty, not free as in beer--but don't kid yourself, if there's a chance of doing anything remotely useful or groundbreaking with any of those for free, that number likely rounds to 0.