Releases keep shifting from API forward to product forward, with API now lagging behind proprietary product surface and special partnerships.
I'd not be surprised if this is the year where some models simply stop being available as a plain API, while foundation model companies succeed at capturing more use cases in their own software.
Possibly but you’d think they enjoy taking money for a product that supports itself (API)
Yeah this can go many ways but there's a world where OpenAI doesn't sell direct model access for the same reasons Cloudflare doesn't sell direct hardware access.