Bezos is playing it smart: sell shovels to all of the gold diggers. If he partners with one of the gold diggers he won't be able to sell shovels to the remainder.
That's a risk-return issue. Bezos plays it safe within Amazon, and quite unsafe outside of that. By the time he acquires something from Amazon it is because it has proven long-term revenue generation and the shake-out period is done and consolidation is about to start. With AI the shake-out is still to come. So he can afford to wait to eventually acquire the winner or to copy it if he can't buy it. Having very deep pockets enables different business strategies.
