> This still feels like a step in the wrong direction, though, especially with OpenAI making so much progress with the efficiency of their models

Gemini also had modest increase before this - don't be surprised when OpenAI also has a "modest increase" with its next release. Cartel-like behaviour doesn't require direct communication when none of the participants are interested in participating in a margin-destroying price-war. All one needs to do is raise their price and watch how the competition react.

Such a scheme (and resulting high margins) would be imperilled by the existence of frontier open-weight models in the market, which may be why the reaction to Chinese models may be particularly shrill.