People are working on lots of things all the time, so far, nothing has approached the efficacy of the transformer architecture.
replyLLMs didn't emerge by chance, they are the culmination of decades of research intersecting with brute force engineering rigor in a perfect storm of innovation. You're not just going to stumble into an alternative approach by dumping loads of cash into research.
Most of those researchers would disagree with your statement that the next major breakthrough is probably decades in the future.
replyMany of the insights accumulated in the decades up to now will probably prove useful for creating non-LLM AI, and the researchers can use LLM AI to speed up their research into non-LLM AI.