Again, a trait they share with companies in other countries. It's the obvious business model: get known by releasing impressive open models, then pivot to closed for even more impressive models.
That's going to be the path for every new company from every country, I assume. They are not releasing open models out of the goodness of their hearts. They are for-profit companies, they don't have hearts, they just have balance sheets.
Yeah Claude Haiku (don't remember the version) did it first, they claimed it was because "it's smarter now" (it's still dumb). Then OpenAI did it with GPT-5 and Google did the same with Gemini Flash and now every new model version is at least twice as expensive than the one before that.
Considering the propaganda value in controlling the inputs to the machine that answers peoples questions, I rather expect them to be subsidized forever.
Consider the propaganda value of a centrally-controlled apparatus like the iPhone, and then reflect on the 100%+ profit margins that product has enjoyed for the past decade.
1. Keeping models closed source.
2. Jacking up pricing. A lot. Sometimes up to 100% increase.