This is likely the case. I think people expecting companies to provide near-SOTA models for free forever are wrong.

I think at some point, Deepseek or Z or other AI training companies will sell their models for fees. I can imagine buying an LLM model for $499 one-time payment for personal use. Maybe buying software and owning it will come back. Some will make you subscribe so you get the latest models as they release them.

Of course, they will also license their models to inference providers like you said.