Chinese models don't need to stay open. The open weight ones just need to have nearly the same capabilities as the models sold by US companies. When that's the case, no one will have a reason to continue paying anything to any US company, thus destroying their business model and business case.
In fact they can be clearly worse, so long as they are same ballpark for many use cases.
I.e. I would pay 15-20% more for comparable work from an open model I control,rather than use anthro et al.
And it seems we've gotten to the point that frontier models benefits are marginal/nominal. Whereas, not long ago Claude was materially ahead and could do things the other models simply couldn't.
Idk about the destroying their business model part. Running your models on your own is akin to running a media server, which most people seem to be fine paying $20/m for someone else to do.
AI companies can’t sustain this bleeding of runway. Eventually they’re all going to have to significantly bump up pricing. I guarantee personal accounts will be between double and triple your current internet and phone plan combined