I think the real competition already exists from the Class D amps from Purifi, Hypex and friends. While the sheer audio output performance of the AHB2 is top notch, it's becomes a lot less top notch once you add the power and cooling costs of running class AB over class D. Then you add the difference in power output capability, difference in weight (important for those of us paying a lot for international shipping) and difference in price (more relevant than everything else for those of us running multi-channel).
The Hypex SMPS1200 is quite well-regarded and seems to sell for around $180 (I found em for €180 at
DIYclassd.com and assumed the usual 1USD = 1EUR conversion). I can see why it wouldn't be acceptable for some companies (like Topping so far), but it's clearly perfectly acceptable for others like Nord or Audiophonics.
Besides, we already have multi-thousand dollar
DACs and headphone amps. Paying 1000-2000 USD for speaker power amps is not too terrible in comparison, if you think about it. Assuming you have the room and speakers for it.
PS: Personally I'm on the Dante/AES67 directly to the PoE-powered active speaker train myself, so I've managed to successfully get completely away from the world of power amplifiers