Agreed. Seems like this could have been a nice model if we would still be in the old GitHub Copilot free request/ premium multiplier mode. It could have been a good compromise to somehow reign in the costs for Microsoft.

But with Copilot now just being paying per-token prices I don't see how this is competitive with Chinese models.

It is probably telling you can't find the costs in the announcement. Because Input $0.75 Cached input $0.075 Output $4.50 might be competitive with Haiku, but nobody in their right mind uses Haiku and Anthropic has abandoned it chasing the tokenmaxers who aren't thinking about budgets.

So I guess they are aiming for corporate customers that are bound to Microsoft through compliance approval that will soon start seeing their budgets explode that have to find some corporate compromise.