Closes gaps, doesn't widen them
Open standards — RISC-V, OpenTitan, Caliptra, OCP — exist at every layer of the stack precisely so that capability isn't gated behind the few companies who can out-spend everyone else.
No open-ecosystem player can out-proprietary the incumbent. Attempting it is the single most reliable way to lose, because it means competing on exactly the axis where capital advantage compounds fastest. The alternative isn’t to build something smaller — it’s to build on the layers where openness is a structural advantage rather than a concession.
The good news, and I think it’s underappreciated, is that real open standards already exist at every level of this stack: RISC-V at the instruction set, OpenTitan and Caliptra for hardware roots of trust, OCP at the system and rack level. These are not aspirational documents. They are shipping, certifiable specifications with production silicon behind them.
A gap widens by default and closes only by design. If capability at each layer is reachable through an open standard, then the question of who gets to build advanced systems stops being decided purely by who can spend the most.