> when it costs >$10B to develop a new microchip manufacturing process that inherently limits how many players the market can support.

Does it though? TSMC's market cap is over a trillion dollars. Likewise Nvidia. What's $10B compared to these numbers? Less than 1%. Maybe we couldn't have a thousand of them, but why couldn't we have ten?

Not only that, this technology isn't a single invention, so why does it have to be a single company? Couldn't some companies make the fabs and other ones operate them, causing them each to require less capital and be easier to compete with on its own? Couldn't the various pieces of equipment in the fabs each be developed by a separate company?

"It costs >$10B to do this as a vertically integrated conglomerate" is bad, so maybe don't have that.