Like you say it's the access to data itself that is valuable. At risk of oversimplifying: building models is the easy part. Plenty of smart people who can do th

Like you say it's the access to data itself that is valuable. At risk of oversimplifying: building models is the easy part. Plenty of smart people who can do that. Data that is expensive to acquire is the best long-term play for an ML company. Either expensive due to regulations or expensive due to the quality of sources. Ideally both.