Like a fraction of a percent of people will run their own models. It won't influence price. Remember that coders/tech people are only a minority of users.

Of course they want to turn the corner and ideally keep all their infra, but they might need to restructure their debts if/when the creditors come knocking.

BUT: they have a money printing machine with inference... Enterprise is where most of the money is made, as they pay (closer to) API prices... consumer & small business plans are heavily discounted in comparison, with mostly underutilized use-it-or-lose it plans. They'd be stupid if they were making an opex loss on inference.

As for why API prices are dropping? Competition is a bitch... but they seem willing and able to play the game for now.

The biggest problem isn't cost of running the models right now, the biggest problem is all the debt they built up on training and data center buildouts. That's what they need to recoup and that's what's going to drive prices up. And once it's recouped they'll need to make pure profits.

And I hope that debt kills them because all the big AI companies are terrible in one way or another, and the eventual price disparity will make it uneconomical to use their models. Then we might return right back to development focusing on small models, not large ones.

They gobbled up the easy money... now they have to work harder for more, and yeah, they may have to slow down a bit and embrace fiscal responsibility... I expect to see restructuring of debts along the way, but I'd be very surprised to see any of the major US based players implode.