> It remains to be seen who is actually willing to pay for it at the prices required to recoup those insane investments.

Everyone. Open models are going to keep prices down. A lot of current models are more than usable. Self-hosting would have been an option if hardware prices get back to sane values.

The insane investments have to do with insane over-valuations, VCs involved and hence media spam on it. Chinese labs for example make do with 1% of the valuation and 1% of the resources.